Open Source Victories of 2008

Meshach writes "Ars Technica has an interesting run-down on the major open source victories of 2008. Some, like Firefox 3, we can probably mostly agree on. Others — KDE 4 comes to mind — will be more controversial. And Mono 2? What else should be on the list?"

Comments

I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Others â" KDE 4 comes to mind â" will be more controversial.

How is that controversial? Oh, the Gnome heathens? Well, they'll be dealt with in 09.
 
2009 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop...Wars.

Re:I like KDE 4

[3vi1]

KDE4's fine... once you're talking 4.1 and later. The 4.0 stuff was very alpha quality, though a necessary step to get developers to actively start supporting it.

They probably meant that the controversy would be because 4.0 was a temporary step backward from 3.5 in features and stability.

Re:I like KDE 4

[stoolpigeon]

4.1 is a lot better than 4.0 but still hasn't caught up with 3.5. I'm really hoping 4.2 gets us closer. Should be just a few more weeks.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Asic Eng]

I dunno - I've been using KDE for years, recently I gave Kubuntu a try (using it to setup the Christmas gift for my dad), and it came with KDE 4.1. Either there is still so much functionality missing that it's not usable yet, or the usage concepts are so far from my expectations that I couldn't get the hang of it. Looking around on the message boards seemed to indicate the former, so I switched back to KDE 3.5.6.

One thing I found particularly puzzling are the plasmoids - I couldn't see the point. They seem to be basically applications which can not be re-sized, brought in the foreground or moved around. They are not in the task panel either. So why would I use a plasmoid instead of a application window? To see it, I would need to minimize every other window on the desktop.

Then again - it didn't seem possible to add an application to the panel - only plasmoids. So no quick access to the 3-4 apps I need the most.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking it - it had a nice look to it, the eye-candy was neat. (The icons were damn hard to read though.) However I just didn't get the hang of it. At the time I couldn't find a general usage guide either, so I'd be curious for any insight you could provide.

Re:I like KDE 4

[PrescriptionWarning]

plasmoids are supposed to be like the widgets in OSX or the widgets in Vista. As far as I'm concerned they're all pretty, but worthless no matter which you're talking about for any OS.

Re:I like KDE 4

[betterunixthanunix]

Uhm, 4.1 is only marginally better than alpha quality. Perfect example: yesterday, I needed to import a CA public key for use in all my KDE apps. There is no tool for this, and I actually had to use 'cat' to append the certificate to the system certificates file. That is an embarrassing oversight, and forces one to question just what sort of design practices, if any, were adhered to by the KDE 4 team.

You say that 4.0 was a temporary step backward from 3.5? 4.1 is still a step backward, just slightly less of one. 3.5 derived a lot of its power from a very solid, well refined OLE framework, and 4.1 has yet to even approach that. In 3.5, it was seamless to browse a tarball, because the ArK component would embed right into Konqueror. ArK does not embed into Dolphin or Konqueror in 4.1, and in standalone ArK, you cannot open most files without extracting, which is annoying and basically defeats the purpose of a tool like ArK. Many users, myself included, use (or used to use) keyboard shortcuts for various actions -- yet that is still completely broken in KDE 4.1, and worse yet, some application shortcuts are broken if you run the application with KDE as the WM, but work just fine if you use something else.

If the KDE team does not get their act together fast, and give people some sort of hope with the 4.2 release, KDE is going to die.

Re:I like KDE 4

[3vi1]

I'm using the nightly releases now; it's much closer to 3.5 in stability and has addressed all of my feature concerns.

Re:I like KDE 4

[betterunixthanunix]

Plasmoids can be embedded in the taskbar, and could be useful for something like a little weather applet. Since Plasmoids use SVG, they fit well no matter what size you choose for your taskbar. There is potential there for something useful, but really, potential will only get us so far.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Tubal-Cain]

About 3.5 more weeks.

Re:I like KDE 4

[betterunixthanunix]

I take it you are not very demanding with features or stability? Things that are completely broken in 4.1:

• SSL -- There is no SSL configuration tool, poor documentation on where SSL certificates are stored or how they are stored, and bugfixes are barely even on the horizon right now.
• Keyboard shortcuts -- not only are global shortcuts still not working, but KDE4 seems to kill shortcuts set by other applications, even when those shortcuts are working when I run the application not in KDE.
• OLE -- 3.5 had solid OLE system that worked exceptionally well. 4.1 has an OLE system that is flaky, poorly unified, and poorly used. Maybe 4.2 will fix it? Maybe we won't see a fix until 5.0.
• Bluetooth -- I should NOT be using Nautilus for browsing Bluetooth filesystems.
• ArK -- I should not have to extract files from an archive to view them. Assuming that ArK will even get me that far, which it sometimes will not.
• Samba -- Samba support should be integrated with Dolphin, or supported by embedding smb4k using the OLE system; see above.
• Configuration -- I should be able to rely on my configuration settings remaining set. Over and over, I see my settings being forgotten when I hit "Apply," even for things that should be a no brainer: setting the default application to open a text file.

You can check the KDE bugzilla if you are curious about just how many things need to be fixed. KDE 4 is a complete mess, and was completely mishandled. It is getting to the point where, embarrassing as it would be, they should probably scrap it and start over by porting KDE3 to Qt4.

Re:I like KDE 4

[scruffy]

I agree. Frankly, KDE 4 sucks. KDE 3.5 was polished and efficient. KDE 4.1 is well, not even close to where KDE 3.5 was. To pick one example, panel hiding is still buggy. Sometimes it hides, sometimes it doesn't. The number of options on panel hiding are now yes or no rather than a gradation of possibilities. I'm wondering if we'll get to KDE 4.5 where things are good again, and then we'll come to some screwy KDE 5.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Tubal-Cain]

No, that's just the name for the trash bin. Or maybe the user's documents folder.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

But apart from that, you love it.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Kubuntu has been my primary desktop OS since Edgy. I've liked it a lot, and even come to depend on several KDE apps.
When Intrepid was released, I decided to try the LiveCD for a while first. I'm glad I did; KDE 4 is not ready for prime time. It may end up killing Kubuntu. If they don't get their shit together by the time support ends for Hardy, I'm changing distros. And I know I'm not the only one.

Re:I like KDE 4

[lord_sarpedon]

A few years ago...I never thought I'd use GNOME, what with its child-proofing mentality.
But now its the only choice that's both functional and actually supported.

(Functional is a relative term. The release that shipped with Intrepid has entirely broken session management, which is a regression from even the ancient releases)

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Gnome because it doesn't get in the way. Sure I know a lot of the Linux crowd loves to configure all the odds and ends but I love having something that has pretty good defaults and is pretty transparent to me. I mean if you really want to customize it you could always play around in the gconf stuff and I wouldn't have a problem with that because advanced tech savvy people would be the only subset of users that would want to do some serious customization.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Risen888]

Dude, if my desktop won't let me remove panels, it is in the way. (Really, try it yourself. You cannot remove the last Gnome panel, which to my knowledge has long been the case. But in the version of Gnome that ships with Ubuntu 8.10, you can't even remove it from the startup programs.) Super lame.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Plasmoids can be embedded in the taskbar, and could be useful for something like a little weather applet.

In other words, the KDE team destroyed a perfectly functioning desktop environment to build a better Weatherbug. This is coming from a long time KDE user, Gnome hater, and still Fedora 6 user (previously Fedora 4 user). I can't upgrade to the newer Fedoras due to bugs. In other words, if it is not going to work "out of the box", there isn't much benefit. Maybe I will switch to Debian.

Re:I like KDE 4

[JackieBrown]

SSL, ArK, and Samba though dolphin are working great in the 4.2 pre-release.

Actually, expect for ArK, the other two have been working since 4.1.

The configuration thing you mentioned I have never seen before and I don't use bluetooth so I don't know if you are right on that or not. (But based on your other comments, I doubt much of what you say in regards to KDE 4.)

And as far as checking the bugzilla as some kind of indication against KDE 4, the vast majority bugs are not for KDE 4.

Re:I like KDE 4

[R15I23D05D14Y]

>> they should probably scrap it and start over by porting KDE3 to Qt4.

I agree 100% that the KDE 4 lacks a horrible level of features for a release series, thus far. The 4.2 betas are more stable and usable for users than 4.0 and 4.1 combined (:P Literally if combining means combining bugs)

That said, since porting would involve re-reading and recoding the whole old codebase, and reimplementing would also involve re-reading and recoding the whole old codebase, I think that scrapping the _very nice_ desktop framework is a very poor suggestion.

Really the new Desktop model is better than the old. The current implementation sucks from lack of features - but it is a better start than a 3.x port. The underlying work are complete enough that a port is now simply beyond a waste of effort. KDE 4 is here to stay, and this is not a bad thing.

Re:I like KDE 4

[stilborne]

"I needed to import a CA public key for use in all my KDE apps"

Konqueror -> Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Crypto -> SSL Signers -> Import.

"That is an embarrassing oversight,"

*cough*

"3.5 derived a lot of its power from a very solid, well refined OLE framework, and 4.1 has yet to even approach that"

the "OLE framework" in KDE is called KParts, and the infrastructure hasn't changed one bit between KDE3 and KDE4.

"ArK does not embed into Dolphin or Konqueror in 4.1"

it doesn't embed into Dolphin, no, because that's not Dolphin's design goal. i don't have 4.1 nearby to test this on, but in 4.2 you can navigate directly into tarballs seamlessly in Konqueror.

"you cannot open most files without extracting"

currently Ark relies on KParts for previewing files without extracting. an "open with" that would extract to a temporary location and launch the app would be nice, though.

"some application shortcuts are broken if you run the application with KDE as the WM,"

which shortcuts would those be? actually, better yet, go to bugs.kde.org and report it there so it can be handled.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Zontar The Mindless]

KDE 3.5 is an outstanding desktop and was what finally convinced me that it was worth my time to use something other than WindowMaker. I guess what I'll do is install KDE4 so I can get updates to the KDE apps I use but go back to WM or maybe try FluxBox or BlackBox instead.

That's what I do now with the Gnome apps that I like, even though the Gnome desktop itself is fairly wretched.

Are there any current distros that are providing KDE 3.5 support? I need to get off openSUSE 10.2 as they've even cut off access to existing packages for it; I was planning to move to 11.1, but maybe it's time for a more radical change...?

Re:I like KDE 4

[SomeKDEUser]

Bullshit. There is no panel hiding in 4.1. Blame our distro, not KDE.

Happily, hiding is really back for 4.2

Re:I like KDE 4

[SomeKDEUser]

The thing is that kubuntu has the worst packaging of KDE4. Much worse than if you compile from source!

I will not attribute to malice what is obviously incompetence, but such incompetence is nearly art.

Re:I like KDE 4

[oakgrove]

For your global shortcuts, at least, you can always just use xbindkeys. A very powerful global shortcuts daemon. It's completely independent of the window manager and should be in the repositories of most distros. It gets really interesting when you combine it with the xmacro GUI scripting program to do things that aren't CLI scriptable such as certain types of interactions with virtual machines. For example, I like to hit a hotkey in Linux and certain things automatically happen in a virtual machine I'm running. That's not something I've been able to script with bash. However, xmacro has no trouble taking over the mouse and keyboard briefly, running into the virtual machine, doing what I've set it up to do and then quickly handing back control to me. It makes some normally repetitive and tedious tasks quite fast and easy.

Re:I like KDE 4

[lbbros]

Ahem... there is NO panel hiding in 4.1. Your distro must have backported the feature from trunk (4.2 has not been released yet). Put the blame on them if it doesn't work properly, not on KDE.

Re:I like KDE 4

[orthogonal]

KDE 4.1 looks like Gnome, only worse. The default font sizes are HUGE, and the default antialiasing is horrible. The launcher button on the kicker panel, instead of just showing applications, shows a tabbed panel that starts on the "favorites" tab; to actually launch an app, I have to chose the application tab, then get a list in a HUGE font, when menu, instead of cascading, are replaced by sub-panels, and the replacement is made slower by stupid animation.

The kicker panel itself is way too large, probably 50 pixels high.

The desktop isn't a normal desktop, instead there's some pseudo-transparent lozenge in which desktop items are grouped.

When I open "System Settings", I get some multi-applet container like MS-Windows or Gnome, not the tree-view I saw in KDE 3.5. I can't even find most things I want to change (like Window Decorations) or even a menu with an about which would tell me what app I'm running.

Did I screw up the install somehow? Am I still running Gnome (no, can't be, every app starts with "K").

What the hell??? If I wanted Gnome or Vista, I'd run that crap. Why can't KDE be KDE?

Help!

I liked KDE because it was clean and functional. KDE 4.1 is a travesty.

Ok, read this bullshit marketing drivel from KDE, it reads like an MBA's sales pitch:

        However Plasma is more than just this familiar collection of utilities, it is a common framework for creating integrated interfaces. It is flexible enough to provide interfaces for mobile devices, media centres and desktop computers; to support the traditional desktop metaphor as well as well as designs that haven't yet been imagined.

Christ, man, I just want to launch an app, and occasionally glance down at the laucher to see how much battery life I have. I don't want a "framework" that can do everything.

But, says KDE:

        Plasma takes a different approach, engaging the user by creating a dynamic and highly customizable environment.

I don't want to be engaged, I just want to launch an app. I'll probably maximize that app, so the desktop won't even be getting a look.

But, says KDE, you can get rid of the gee-whiz gee-gaws:

        With Plasma, you can let your desktop (and accompanying support elements) act like it always did. You can have a task bar, a background image, shortcuts, etc. If you want to, however, you can use tools provided by Plasma to take your experience further, letting your desktop take shape based on what you want and need.

Oh, ok, that's cool. So can I get rid of the "cashew" control on the desktop?

        Although putting an option to disable the cashew for desktops sounds reasonable, from a coding point of view it would introduce unnecessary complexity and would break the design. What has been suggested is, since the destkop itself (a containment) is handled by plugins, to write a plugin that would draw the desktop without the cashew itself. Currently some work ("blank desktop" plugin) is already present in KDE SVN. With containment type switching expected by KDE 4.2, it is not unreasonable to see alternative desktop types developed by then.

So let me get this straight: Plasma's a revolutionary framework that can do things "that haven't yet been imagined." But it also supports the traditional desktop.

But getting rid on a "cashew" on the desktop is too hard to code, but if you write a trivial plugin that redraws the entire desktop (which isn't so trivial, as it's a yet unready work in progress, and won't even be possible until the next release of KDE) you can get around this unwanted "feature".

Come on, guys, your super framework requires a plugin to be written just to present a blank desktop? And plugins won't work until 4.2? And a boolean "don't show" would break the design? You guys got seduced into major mission creep.

This isn't a desktop environment, it's the dev's toy. Which is great, but don't claim it's ready for end users.

Re:I like KDE 4

[oakgrove]

Debian Lenny for one is still merrily using KDE 3.5.9.

Re:I like KDE 4

[orthogonal]

In other words, the KDE team destroyed a perfectly functioning desktop environment to build a better Weatherbug.

This is a perfect summary of may reaction to KDE4. Mod parent up.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Tadu]

I dunno - I've been using KDE for years, recently I gave Kubuntu a try (using it to setup the Christmas gift for my dad), and it came with KDE 4.1.

If you want to use KDE4 in any useful way, then go for any KDE distribution. In particular, OpenSuSE is known to be quite good for handling KDE4: you can still install KDE3, or you can install KDE 4.1 with a bunch of KDE 4.2 features backported, which actually works quite well. As much as people like Ubuntu, Kubuntu is simply KDE 4.1 hacked together in what feels like the worst possible way. If you insist on Intrepid, then at least grab the KDE 4.2 b2 binaries. You trade in a constantly crashing plasma for a KDE version without the plasmoid that shows CPU/mem usage (and that one was really handy). So whatever Shuttleworth archieved with Ubuntu, his team doesn't deserve any credit for what they did to Kubuntu. :-(

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

"you cannot open most files without extracting"

currently Ark relies on KParts for previewing files without extracting. an "open with" that would extract to a temporary location and launch the app would be nice, though.

Had been nicer with a usermode file system that used archives as mounted file systems.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Want functional? Try XFCE. Neither GNOME nor KDE fit into that description. Their designers seem to think that we should be running their Desktop Environments *instead* of our applications. KDE4 widgets are interesting, and I might want to have some of them, but the trade-offs for switching are just too big. KDE 4.2 is more or less functional, but desktop effects and animations, even when completely disabled make my C2Duo 2.6 4GB RAM feel like running WinXP in a 64 MB RAM Pentium 2. How hard is it to make a Desktop System that has all the features and doesn't have to show them off at all times?

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably used plasmoids for everything you see in the task bar anyway. Would you be more happy with it if you could not implement your own stuff?

Re:I like KDE 4

[Fred_A]

I like Gnome because it doesn't get in the way.

Doesn't get in the way ? As soon as you click in a window it comes to the front and obscures the material you were trying to view.

I suppose that it makes sense to Windows and Mac users but for the rest of us it's seriously irritating. I suppose it can be turned off by editing the Gnome XML configuration file (a staple of the traditional Gnome user friendliness) but it's a major pain in the neither region. As are a number of other defaults picked by the Gnome people who want to make the experience as "Windows-like" as possible for the corporate users.

I just can't wait for the transition to KDE4 to be complete. KDE works *for* me, not against. I don't want a desktop that "doesn't get in the way", I want one that actively makes things easier. KDE does that for me.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Kjella]

Ahem... there is NO panel hiding in 4.1. Your distro must have backported the feature from trunk (4.2 has not been released yet). Put the blame on them if it doesn't work properly, not on KDE.

For some reason, I can't agree on whether that's good (KDE is not buggy) or bad (panel hiding is a x.2 feature that arrives a year after first release of the DE).

Re:I like KDE 4

[Jurily]

it doesn't embed into Dolphin, no, because that's not Dolphin's design goal.

What? What kind of *nix file manager leaves out tarballs? Hell, even Explorer does zip.

Rule of thumb: if it does less than mc, it sucks.

Re:I like KDE 4

[squiggleslash]

Generally speaking, I'm unaware of a single operating system environment where you're allowed to remove the critical shell user-interface element completely.

In Windows, you can't remove the Start button or taskbar. In Mac OS X, you can't remove the menu bar or dock. In Mac OS 1-9, you can't remove the menu bar or Finder.

In GNOME, the system is controlled using panels. You add widgets to control the environment by bringing up a context menu on an available panel. Without at least one panel, you can't control anything. Unlike the aforementioned operating systems (Windows excepted) you can, at least, hide this remaining user interface element - right click on it, bring up "Properties", and select the "auto-hide" option. And like most operating systems, GNOME will hide everything temporarily if an application - a game, a media player - requests it.

So I'm not sure what your objection is. You don't want to be able to control GNOME? Why have a DE at all if that's the case?

Re:I like KDE 4

[gladish]

I say we just fork into two completely separate projects to include the kernel all the way up to the last u.i. pixmap and share nothing. We can call them klinux, and glinux. This should make things crystal clear for everyone and get tons of commercial developement going for the linux desktop. Oh shit I forgot, we'll need a few custom distros so we can choose different package management systems, and probably a distro or two that will ship capable of playing mp3s, and certainly one that stallman approves of, and one that, ah fuck it.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Joe Jay Bee]

So, your point in favour of KDE4 is that it can't hide the panel? Something Windows, OSX and indeed pretty much every Linux/BSD desktop environment do with ease?

Right.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Tanktalus]

It's a good thing.

KDE 4.0, and to a lesser degree, 4.1, were not targeted at production. They were targeted at getting feedback and bugreports from a wider audience. Yes, a lot of features were missing. In 4.2, I'm sure a lot of features will still be missing. But, the feedback they get from the early(ish) adopters lets them know what to prioritise. If no one complains about panel hiding, then the devs are better to spend their time on other issues that people actually complain about. Otherwise, we may wait another two years for ANY version of KDE 4 to come out, with lower quality (fewer testers due to less excitement), and they'll have wasted a bunch of time on features that, really, no one complains about.

This is the open-source way. It's far better than the proprietary way of fixing everything at high-cost when no one actually cares.

Re:I like KDE 4

[betterunixthanunix]

"Konqueror -> Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Crypto -> SSL Signers -> Import."

Maybe this is fixed in the nightly builds or in 4.2? I am using 4.1.3 right now, and yes, that option *exists* but it does not work, it does not propagate the public keys globally, and it does not retain those settings after hitting "OK." Claiming that is the solution to my problem is kind of like calling your alpha release "version 4.0 stable." Hmm...

"the "OLE framework" in KDE is called KParts, and the infrastructure hasn't changed one bit between KDE3 and KDE4."

Except that the use of KParts has changed. In KDE3, all the KParts components played well with each other (except for the Kontact KParts, which only embedded in Kontact), which is exactly what OLE is supposed to do. In KDE4, a few components still embed in one another, but nothing on the level of KDE 3. The OP was claiming that KDE 4.1 was approaching 3.5 in terms of functionality; where are the useful, play-nice-with-others KParts?

"it doesn't embed into Dolphin, no, because that's not Dolphin's design goal. i don't have 4.1 nearby to test this on, but in 4.2 you can navigate directly into tarballs seamlessly in Konqueror."

Then Dolphin was poorly designed. I do not need a file manager if all it does is browse normal, already mounted file systems. Dolphin certain supports some level of OLE, the fact that it cannot embed an ArK component is, once again, an oversight, and an embarrassing one. Maybe this will be fixed in 4.2.x? 4.3?

"currently Ark relies on KParts for previewing files without extracting. an "open with" that would extract to a temporary location and launch the app would be nice, though."

And once again, they do not play well with others. Why not have an Okular component embed into ArK? Why force me to extract a PDF file just to view it? If the file manager does not embed an ArK component, and ArK cannot embed an Okular component, then why would I use Dolphin/ArK when I could just use a terminal? In 3.5, there was no question: KPDF embedded in ArK, ArK embedded in Konqueror, and the software stack was more useful than trying to navigate using just a terminal.

"which shortcuts would those be? actually, better yet, go to bugs.kde.org and report it there so it can be handled."

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165441#c2

Notice that they did not even PLAN to fix it in 4.1. Maybe it will be fixed in 4.2? I can only hope so, because it is clumsy, annoying, and frankly stupid for shortcuts to fail. What is very odd, though, is the kxkb shortcuts work in Fluxbox; oh wait, that is confirmed too:

http://markmail.org/message/dxz6fntbrp73cljl

Again, NO PLANS to fix. Why are there no plans to fix this? Keyboard shortcuts are the only way to keep a large GUI like KDE from being too clumsy to use, but they are sitting around scratching their heads and not even trying to get this working. Again, one is forced to ask just what design methodology they are adhering to, if any. Another commenter noted that there are other shortcut daemons; is that really what we are stuck with?

Re:I like KDE 4

[betterunixthanunix]

Sadly, much as I like KDE, this is basically the case. Nobody really knows what Plasmoids are useful for, other than simplistic applets that we already had with other systems. It is kind of interesting to having something like Folder View...but not really useful. Unfortunately, the KDE team spent so much time worrying about Plasma and plasmoids and getting it all working that they neglected things like KHotKeys, KSSL, etc.

Re:I like KDE 4

[QCompson]

Yes, you can use xbindkeys, which isn't hard to set up, but is this really something you should have to do with a desktop environment like KDE? I can understand using a program like xbindkeys for a less featured window manager like openbox and fluxbox, but KDE?!? (Not to mention the fact that both openbox and fluxbox allow for customization of keyboard shortcuts)

It boggles the mind that it took the KDE folks a full year to (supposedly) get simple configurable keyboard shortcuts working on KDE4. How could that have possibly been that far down on the "to-do" list?

Re:I like KDE 4

[dcollins117]

B-bu-but it's got wobbly windows, and you can turn your clock upside down!

Re:I like KDE 4

[Narishma]

You are clearly a troll, or you have bad drivers or bad hardware since KDE4 works perfectly fine on netbooks with 512MB of ram with all effects and animations.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Narishma]

Well it's simple really. It's not a feature that the developers use. That's how free software works. You implement things you need or like before other things.

Re:I like KDE 4

[mtxf]

"ArK does not embed into Dolphin or Konqueror in 4.1"

it doesn't embed into Dolphin, no, because that's not Dolphin's design goal. i don't have 4.1 nearby to test this on, but in 4.2 you can navigate directly into tarballs seamlessly in Konqueror.

i'm curious, what exactly is dolphin's design goal(s) then?

i assumed it was meant to replace the file-browsing capabilities of konqueror; indeed konqueror is now labeled specifically as "Web Browser" and Dolphin as "File Manager" in my K menu.

(Using kubuntu intrepid here, kde 4.1.3)

oh, and i can confirm that konqueror in 4.1(.3) does have the desired behaviour of seamlessly browsing archives and opening files etc. although it doesn't try to open pdfs inside itself like it did with kpdf in 3.x (a good thing), i realise there is probably some configuration for this hidden somewhere.

"3.5 derived a lot of its power from a very solid, well refined OLE framework, and 4.1 has yet to even approach that"

the "OLE framework" in KDE is called KParts, and the infrastructure hasn't changed one bit between KDE3 and KDE4.

i've noticed problems with ole in kde 4.1 also, dragging and dropping no longer seems to work in many cases - but i think this is more a problem with the new applications not yet fully implementing support for it, rather than a problem with the underlying framework.

i am eagerly awaiting the next amarok 2.x release, because as other posters have pointed out, 2.0 is a bit of a step backwards in terms of functionality.

don't take this post as a complaint, i think it's great what the kde team are doing. i wouldn't want it any other way :)

oh, and if you're tempted to say "they should have just held 2.0 until January, then", don't bother: making releases from the code repository is an absolutely requirement to keep open source projects moving, and one of the downsides of that is that often a first release of a new series isn't what a consumer-grade user is going to what to cut their teeth on. that's why there is another step in row, e.g. distributions. not that they seem to always be doing their users the best favours lately in that regard.

QFT

Re:I like KDE 4

[QCompson]

Well it's simple really. It's not a feature that the developers use. That's how free software works. You implement things you need or like before other things.

Which would be fine if KDE was just someone's hobby. But there are developers such as Aaron Seigo who get paid to work on KDE, so he shouldn't be just motivated by his personal desire to have twitter desktop widgets take priority over all else.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, his point is that KDE4.0/KDE4.1 can't. "KDE4" is still a moving target and if you had any clue, you would know that, as told many times and indicated in the release notes, those releases were not meant for regular users.
The real problem was that distros (all the big ones at least) pushed KDE4 on their users, even though they knew it was a lot less than ready, with some of them even dropping support for KDE3 altogether (which at the time was freaking ridiculous).

Re:I like KDE 4

[lordtoran]

I agree. Kubuntu was a big hassle; it's just Ubuntu with vanilla KDE smashed on top, and without the nice configuration tools. I switched back to Mandriva, which has a KDE 4 that doesn't suck.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Use twm then and quit bitching.

Re:I like KDE 4

[ShakaUVM]

>>so I switched back to KDE 3.5.6.

That was basically my experience as well.

Actually, KDE4 wouldn't even run out of the box on my system off a fresh install of OpenSUSE. A couple hours of hacking got it to work... and yeah. I wiped the drive and installed KDE3 instead.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Narishma]

No he shouldn't, he should work on what his employer tells him, which is not the same thing as what you want from him.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Risen888]

There are several other options for that functionality. For instance, I use the AWN dock in Gnome. I could also use Gimme or any one of several other solutions. I do not need a Gnome panel. I want it to go the hell away. I formerly had this option. This functionality has been removed. I'm working around it presently by having one panel in the upper-right corner that only contains the user switch applet and having it auto-hide. But I want it gone. Removing the gnome-panel package would presumably work but is not an option for me because this is a multi-user machine.

I can remove the panel in KDE 3 and 4. I can remove the panel in Fluxbox. I can't in Gnome because it insists on babysitting me. I find this to be abysmally stupid.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Skater]

Slackware! The latest version, 12.2, has KDE 3.5.10. :)

I haven't tried KDE 4. KDE 3.5 is, as you said, quite good, and Slackware hasn't moved to 4.x yet (which sounds like a good thing from what I've read), so I haven't gone to the trouble.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree somewhat. KDE4 has so far been a big disappointment to me. The KDE applications are still all solid, but the desktop itself is a letdown. Yeah, it's pretty and shiny and does some fancy stuff if you manage to have the right video driver, but the functionality and usability are a step back.

I have logged dozens of bugs in the past year, and all but one have been closed as "WONTFIX" or "INVALID". It's never KDE's bug, it's either the video driver, X.org, or the user being stupid. I have one bug that was closed with a comment that I might be "more happy with another desktop".

KDE 4.2 is my last hope. I've been with KDE since 0.99, but if I don't see significant improvements in 4.2, I'm gone. I'm not using computers to play games and twiddle shiny knobs, I'm using computers to be productive. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be a concept the current KDE core developers understand.

I'm not alone in my observation either. Lots of people are sorely disappointed with the direction KDE 4 is going. I recently was in a gathering that included two of the KDE 1.0 core developers. They agreed with me that KDE 4 is a disappointment.

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.

Re:I like KDE 4

[TwistedSymmetry]

XFCE would be very nice except for the horrible memory leak in xfdesktop and xfce4-menu-plugin. It basically defeats the main purpose of xfce, which is to be a low-memory desktop. This REALLY needs to be fixed.

http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3812

Re:I like KDE 4

[Coryoth]

Doesn't get in the way ? As soon as you click in a window it comes to the front and obscures the material you were trying to view...I suppose it can be turned off by editing the Gnome XML configuration file (a staple of the traditional Gnome user friendliness) but it's a major pain in the neither region.

Out of curiousity, I opened the configuration editor (the graphical frontend to all those XML files that you can, if you wish, edit by hand instead). I selected Edit->Find, and typed "raise" in the search field (and selected "Search also in key names"). That produced a list of results, including "/apps/metacity/general/raise_on_click"; selecting that in the search results took me to the relevant key, with an obvious checkbox beside it, and a detailed description. The checkbox was selected. I unselected it. Now clicking on windows doesn't make them raise (instead we have the traditional UNIX WM of a click on the titlebar being required to raise the window). This setting was easy to find, clearly described, and (very) easy to change, all through the GUI for configuration changes in GNOME. Beyond the fact that it is classed as a more advanced configuration option (and thus only accessible through the configuration editor, and not directly exposed in the basic preferences) I really don't see the problem.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

what he said was if you want that feature use konqueror instead...

Re:I like KDE 4

[lordSaurontheGreat]

And may 2010 and 2011 and 2012 and all that follow continue the wars. So long as they're competing, we keep getting a better Linux desktop.

Heck, I'd go so far as to suggest that because of all the internal competition inside of Linux desktop systems that the Linux desktop surpassed Windows a long time ago. If I were to volunteer a date, I'd say 1998, or earlier. It's only recently that we've seen Linux administrable by those who aren't sysadmin enthusiasts. It's always been as usable for users as Windows, if not more.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably used plasmoids for everything you see in the task bar anyway. Would you be more happy with it if you could not implement your own stuff?

GP here, I was not trying to be overly critical. I view the taskbar as little more than an application launcher. I've used an auto-hide taskbar view since the Windows95 days. It is best out of the way, IMO. The only added functionality I've liked is the clock and quick-launch icons. What astounds me to this day is the obsession with having the bar on the top or the bottom. Newer GUIs often don't implement the ability to shift it to the left (or right) which makes for a great way to list 20+ open apps in a single desktop with 30 chars of title text on each desktop (as opposed to a sliver of an icon when you have a bottom task bar). I know the KDE team wants to do new stuff but the basics ought not be abandoned. Last time I tried KDE4, it was on Fedora9, there was no option to have a solid-color, no picture desktop background. All I wanted was black and the only obvious way to do that would be load up a black gif or something. My desktop is just a place for file, folders, shortcuts. It is not a glorified taskbar or embedded portal or TV screen.

Perhaps some of the obsession with translucent windows/bars, spinning 3D app cubes and whatnot is the fact that a bottom or top view taskbar has such limited capacity to display title text of a dozen+ applications. I just flick my mouse to the left and can see my running apps and frequently-used shortcuts. Seems more effective, IMO.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Disregard that, I suck dicks.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Zontar The Mindless]

It appears that you can still use KDE 3.5 with openSUSE 11.1.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Zontar The Mindless]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not sure how you'd go about installing Slackware on a laptop with no floppy drive.

Re:I like KDE 4

[ChienAndalu]

I, for one, agree with you and your post would have a Score:1 on the side if I had points left.

Not long ago, I swore by KDE, tweaked every tiny bit, installed custom themes and even browsed the web with Konqueror, while ridiculing the sluggish Gnome.

But alas, the packet manager brought KDE4 along, and it sucked. I tried some window managers like awesome, and while they have their advances, they are the playground of a handful of developers, just like KDE. They are constantly breaking stuff and telling the user to get over it. XFCE is nearly there, but I believe there was something wrong with the panel.

Now I use Gnome and don't configure anything anymore. I use ~4 different Linux Desktops and syncing the configuration would be a pain in the ass anyways. Sure, it still has some weirdnesses, like a broken session manager and crashing keyboard applet, but I can live with that. I can't live with plasmoids - sorry...

Now I have to try XFCE again to find out what I didn't like about it. Sometimes I wish I was a dumb, accepting Windows-doofus and just wouldn't care.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm..... yes you can very well remove the taskbar in ***dows.

I'm not sure if you've been living under a rock for the past 10 years but there's always been alternate shells for the OS hell you don't even need to run a shell at all.

Re:I like KDE 4

[lbbros]

No (I have autohide working in my trunk install, BTW), it's that complaints about a broken feature that is a result of a backport go to the backporters, and not to the project itself.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Brandybuck]

uh... with a CD?

Re:I like KDE 4

[Brandybuck]

I gotta agree too. Plasmoids on the panel are great. Plasmoids on the desktop suck. If they were like OSX and instantly available, I would be happy. There are supposed to be "workspaces" that you can switch between, but it's slow and painful. And the entirety of the user documentation consists of a FAQ.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Skater]

Like Brandybuck said, with a CD?

Or a USB drive?

Or a network connection?

Re:I like KDE 4

[ozphx]

In Windows, you can't remove the Start button or taskbar.

Huh? Change your shell to cmd.exe (or powershell if you want something actually useful).

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Gnome because it doesn't get in the way.

Doesn't get in the way ? As soon as you click in a window it comes to the front and obscures the material you were trying to view.

I suppose that it makes sense to Windows and Mac users but for the rest of us it's seriously irritating. I suppose it can be turned off by editing the Gnome XML configuration file (a staple of the traditional Gnome user friendliness) but it's a major pain in the neither region. As are a number of other defaults picked by the Gnome people who want to make the experience as "Windows-like" as possible for the corporate users.

I just can't wait for the transition to KDE4 to be complete. KDE works *for* me, not against. I don't want a desktop that "doesn't get in the way", I want one that actively makes things easier. KDE does that for me.

Are you serious.
Activating a window by clicking MUST make it pop infront of the others.

This has been by design since the beginning of the UI world.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Enlightenment DR16.. doesn't use any startbar or anything like that.

Re:I like KDE 4

[Zontar The Mindless]

Hm, I'm looking at http://slackware.com/install/ which says,

2. Selecting A Boot Disk
Slackware Linux comes with many precompiled boot disks to use during the installation process. You want to choose one that best fits your hardware.

3. Selecting A Root Disk
You need to have a diskette with a root filesystem and the setup program in order to install Slackware Linux. There are several to choose from.

Surely I can't be the only one who's seen this this and thought, "Well, I've no floppy drive, so this is a non-starter for me"? Perhaps it'd be better to say "Slackware Linux comes with many precompiled boot disk images [my emphasis] to use during the installation process"?

Only later in the piece (http://slackware.com/install/setup.php) does it say that

You can install from another hard disk partition, floppy disks, an NFS mount, a pre-mounted directory, or from CD-ROM.

(/me reflects that he sometimes hears complaints like this about *our* documentation, and might now be slightly less inclined to respond to such comments with, "You didn't bother reading the next section, did you?" in future...)

Re:I like KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you want fuzzy focus... That way you can mouse over a window to get focus on it and type, whilst not bringing it right to the front. You can still click if you want to bring it to the front :)

It's in the window manager settings.

Re:I like KDE 4

[jonaskoelker]

Doesn't get in the way ? As soon as you click in a window it comes to the front and obscures the material you were trying to view.

I suppose it can be turned off by editing the Gnome XML configuration file...

Run compiz. From the configuration tool (ccsm), you can set the raise behavior you want.

While I appreciate the bling factor of compiz, what's more important is that it's geek-friendly.

Re:I like KDE 4

[emj]

Just stop the booting at GRUB and edit kernel command to include init=/bin/bash. That's about the same. Or add the file /etc/inittab with a initdefault line in it, using an runlevel without X.

Re:I like KDE 4

[lwsimon]

In that case, why not offer binary builds of "KDE 4.0rc1", then move to "KDE 4.0rc2"? Instead, we keep moving up the point releases, and doing what are essentially beta tests on people's desktop.

Re:I like KDE 4

[lwsimon]

I don't understand the "its the dev's toy" thing.

I do a bit of development work, and I want the fastest, most stripped down desktop I can get. I run Awesome when I'm doing any type of development work. KDE4 is the last thing I'd want between me and my code.

Of course, I also spent $250 on a keyboard, so maybe I take things a bit too seriously.

We won already. Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I wish people would just sit back, relax, and realize that there mere EXISTENCE of open source is the real victory here. Do we really need more than that? I have a choice in software. I have a freedom to choose. Neither Microsoft nor Apple dictate how I execute personal computing tasks.

We won. Let's give it up with the smug articles about how our sh*t doesn't stink. It's really tiresome.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Open source has been around a lot longer than you know, n00b. You guys just finally have a little mascot to worship.
 
What's up with people around here who can remember poke codes for a Vic-20 but seem to think that open source never existed prior to linux?
 
Are people really that lost or would the realization of what really happened in computing history bring them down to the point that they'll realize that there is no good fight to fight and that there never has been?

Re:We won already. Geez.

[theillien2]

AC didn't even mention Linux. Perhaps AC was referring to FreeBSD. Or perhaps you are one of those that thinks because you did it long before so many others that you are better than the next geek.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[theheadlessrabbit]

Honestly, I wish people would just sit back, relax, and realize that there mere EXISTENCE of open source is the real victory here. Do we really need more than that?

yes, we do. we need software that actually works.
some of us have work that needs to get done. (that's why i use gnome and winXP.)

Re:We won already. Geez.

[FishWithAHammer]

When your stuff isn't worth mentioning in the same breath as its proprietary competition (KDE4--how did it go so wrong? is the theme here, with Firefox and Google Chrome good counterpoints to this), you aren't "victorious," you're sucking wind.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[tsa]

I'm so happy to have switched from Linux to OSX. After 10 years of jumping through hoops to get simple things done, struggling with software that's far behind in capabilities and ease of use compared to commercial software, and listening to conversations like this (it's crap now but in a few weeks/months/years...) I'd had enough. Now I have a system that works most of the time. And that is worth every penny I paid for it.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... how good for you.

Linux distributions were "terrible" 3 years ago. Then the most important features on such systems, desktop environments became to that state that you can actually do things without suffering bad UI.

Linux OS has got good hardware support for typical desktop computers now in last 4 years and now it has almost as good as the Windows does. Only difference is that you do not need driver disks to get device work. But bad thing is, if your distributor does not include device driver to Linux OS, you need to change the distribution or even compile the Linux OS yourself to get the needed driver if not possible to get simple module.

I have used now 2 years a system what works even on the critical moments. It does not fight back for me when I want to change the UI or do even the rm -frd / kind stupid things. My system is not unsecure by root account disabled and only using sudo, but better way, root + sudo. This system is used by multiple people and everyone has got such computer as they would want, without whining from them.
And yes, this does not run crappy Ubuntu distribution or any Windows system.

Only one got idea to get a mac, but she is a graphic disigner and needs a computer what does fit to her look anyways...

Re:We won already. Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to hear you are satisfied. FOSS still gives you a choice. And Mac is based on OSS anyway.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[tsa]

Certainly. And I still think Linux is a fantastic OS, far better than Vista or Windows 7 or even OSX can ever be. It falls short on the desktop, however.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[kerohazel]

I too have a system that works most of the time, and it's worth every penny that I never paid for it. :)

Errr... Linux, not a pirated copy of Windows, in case you were wondering.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well. I think you are obviously a troll. What kind of simple things you cannot get done with Linux?

Re:We won already. Geez.

[jabithew]

I too have a system that works most of the time

I don't think anyone read that and thought you'd pirated Windows.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[Fear the Clam]

Get laid.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[Risen888]

Well, fucking happy day. Good on you, now take your goddamn Playskool My 1st Computer and GTFO. The grown-ups are talking.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[tsa]

I've used Linux longer than you have lived, considering the way you dare speak to me.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I am saying is that you guys act like you're changing the landscape and doing it by denying the history of what came before. We had tons of open source in the 70s and 80s. Wake up!

Re:We won already. Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guessing you aren't talking about servers then?

Re:We won already. Geez.

[cyclop]

My own experience as a Macbook user:

Installing scientific Python modules (scipy, numpy, matplotlib) on Linux -trivial.
Installing the same module on Windows: boring but easy.
Installing them on OS X: Next to impossible, a lot of command line hacking needed.

I have a MB Pro and I always fire up the Gentoo partition. I tried to use OS X but the whole thing is terrible. Gimp doesn't work. Inkscape doesn't work. Scientific packages don't work. I simply cannot do serious work on OS X.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[tsa]

Gimp and Inkscape work fine if you install X on OSX. It's on the DVD's that came with your MBP.

Re:We won already. Geez.

[tsa]

Who modded this flamebait? There's nothing remotely flaming in this post.

Nokia ad

[Tubal-Cain]

Of the 7 "victories" listed, 3 involve Nokia:
Their opening up of Symbian
Their purchase of Trolltech
And the unveiling of Maemo 5

Yay.

Re:Nokia ad

[linhares]

You must be new here!

ARS' Nokia fanboyism never fails to amaze.

Re:Nokia ad

[Anonymous Coward]

The world's largest mobile phone company:
-buys full control of the world's most popular mobile OS so it can liberate it
-buys Trolltech to directly enhance FOSS portability
-unveils the newest version of the most Tablet-friendly Linux distribution

If these are just an ad, what are Firefox 3 and Chrome doing on the list then? Yay, a browser update and yet another KHTML-derivative. KDE4 was the biggest open source failure of 2008.

Do you realize that what Nokia is doing is comparable to Microsoft open sourcing Windows? (Except Nokia was never evil in the first place.) HUGE victory.

Re:Nokia ad

[Tubal-Cain]

what are Firefox 3 and Chrome doing on the list then? Yay, a browser update and yet another KHTML-derivative. KDE4 was the biggest open source failure of 2008.

I never said I approved of the rest of the list.

Firefox 3:
An open source browser stays open source for another version. It's much better than before, but I am not convinced it advanced FOSS's cause very far. After all, Windows users benefit as well, and most don't care about open source.

Chrome:
Google releases a semi-open-source browser for a completely closed source platform. Kinda defeats the purpose. The only real news here is a new browser not based on Gecko.

KDE 4:
Linux's second most popular DE (Ubuntu gives Gnome nearly a third of the Linux market single-handedly, so unless KDE is really popular in the rest of the Linux world...) has a promising but uncouth release. Hardly a "victory" yet.

Android:
OK, not the greatest example of FOSS in the world, but a good step in the right direction anyways. But if it belongs on this list, FOSS is in trouble.

Python:
See Firefox

openSolaris:
Sun continues it's tradition of half-hearted commitment to open source by releasing their OS on a license incompatible with the GPL.

Mono:
noun: Popular name for infectious mononucleosis

More earth-shattering are ATI's open source drivers or Dell selling Ubuntu pre-installed. Maybe KDE now being portable to Windows.

Re:Nokia ad

[broeman]

I agree, this article would be a much better candidate (even though they have some of the same points).

Re:Nokia ad

[moonbender]

Less than 4000 results for Nokia, while there are about 80000 for either Microsoft or Apple, 40000 for Google or iPhone, 2000 for Twitter (many of these overlap). Flickr, of all things, has about the same results as Nokia. Of course your query does include the forums.

The open source editor Ryan Paul is a fan of the Maemo platform, but your method for establishing fanboyism is rather flawed. Or you're just saying that Ars is a technology fanboy, which undoubtedly is true.

Re:Nokia ad

[Anonymous Coward]

openSolaris:
Sun continues it's tradition of half-hearted commitment to open source by releasing their OS on a license incompatible with the GPL.

Opensource != GPL

I hope you don't use the Apache Server, as it is also not GPL

Re:Nokia ad

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me one other company that has opensourced more software than Sun.

You can't? Then shut up!

Re:Nokia ad

[squiggleslash]

but I am not convinced it advanced FOSS's cause very far. After all, Windows users benefit as well, and most don't care about open source.

Firefox is a cross platform browser that runs on Free operating systems as well as proprietary ones. What makes it valuable is that it's enormously popular on Windows. Without that popularity, it's fair to say that most websites would be tied to the default Windows browser, Internet Explorer, and all alternative platforms, be they proprietary - like Mac OS X - or Free, like GNU/Linux - would have little access to the bulk of content on the 'net.

Effectively, without Firefox (or some other Free Software browser doing what Firefox has done) it would not be possible to use Ubuntu as an every day desktop system, except for some very limited applications. Firefox more than anything else has made GNU/Linux "ready for the desktop".

Re:Nokia ad

[Tubal-Cain]

I did say that it needed to be GPL, just licensed compatibly. The Apache License (2.0) is compatible with GPL 3.

Personally, I think I'd prefer the BSD license.

Re:Nokia ad

[Tubal-Cain]

Clarification: one of the modified BSD Licences.

Re:Nokia ad

[Anonymous Coward]

The CDDL is compatible with GPL, but the GPL is not compatible with CDDL.

Altough the latter hasn't been tested... and some even say you can mix code, if the code under CDDL is not a derivate of the GPL code it is linked to.

Re:Nokia ad

[Anonymous Coward]

If you prefer BSD type licenses you should prefer also the CDDL license, as both can be mixed (see e.g. ZFS under FreeBSD), and the CDDL license is certainly closer to BSD than to GPL.

OpenOffice.org 3?

[Bordgious]

What about OpenOffice.org 3? I know for the Mac version, it was a dramatic improvement (at least as far as aesthetics are concerned)...

Re:OpenOffice.org 3?

[Drinking Bleach]

Must've been a Mac thing then. I tried OOo 3 myself and was hard pressed to find anything that really stood out from the 2.x series. I can't name any specifics right now, don't remember them, but suffice to say, I didn't feel like I was missing anything out when I got rid of it and just continued to use Debian Testing's 2.4.x packages.

Re:OpenOffice.org 3?

[Zontar The Mindless]

What about OpenOffice.org 3? I know for the Mac version, it was a dramatic improvement (at least as far as aesthetics are concerned)...

It's an amazing improvement on Linux and Windows as well, and not just the aesthetics - it's hellaciously faster and less resource-piggy, among other things.

I'm guessing from the Overrated mod, though, that someone has an axe to grind...

Re:OpenOffice.org 3?

[Bert64]

The pdf import plugin is what does it for me...
But aside from that, i agree... Software like this reached it's peak for the average user some time ago, and new versions offer nothing that people need...

I would like to see OO become more modular, like the linux kernel where...
Feature modules are not loaded until you use them (faster startup times, less memory usage in typical cases)..
Features can be disabled by removing the module..

OO as it stands is bloated, but it needs to be... people will refuse to switch to oo because it lacks some obscure feature that ms has, and yet adding all these features to oo makes the app bigger and slower for everyone.

Re:OpenOffice.org 3?

[jabithew]

It was. They ported to Aqua from X11, so it feels more like a native OSX application

Python 3

[dmomo]

Pretty exciting stuff. Another notable open source victory was that of the release of Django 1.0 in November.

Sadly, Django is not written in Python 3, and python 3 breaks backwards compatibility.

Since both the Django and python communities are very active, I suspect this will be remedied soon. I cannot wait.

Re:Python 3

[ubernostrum]

Since both the Django and python communities are very active, I suspect this will be remedied soon. I cannot wait.

You might end up in trouble, then; as explained by the FAQ, it'll be a while before Django officially supports Python 3.0.

Remember: even the Python developers themselves are talking about a migration timeline of years, rather than a simple "next version of every library will be on Python 3" (which just isn't possible with any kind of responsible release process). See this summary I posted on django-developers for some more information.

Re:Python 3

[wisty]

For a lot of projects I would be skeptical of the value of Python 3 (as Python 2.6 has those cool multiprocessing and json modules); but Python 3 really fixes a lot of Unicode warts. In a web framework, I guess that's pretty important.

Re:Python 3

[SomeKDEUser]

Except Python always breaks compatibility. It is amazing how people keep inventing nice clean languages, realise they miss this or that crucial feature, develop it in a non-compatible way, and iterate.

And then the nice simple language is not so nice and simple anymore. And people move onto the next fad.

But in python, people stay with the last version they were comfortable with! So you have n versions of the damn thing installed, because devs will not port their pet project to the latest version as it appears (I understand their pain, but in makes user's lives miserable)

Awfulbar

[gumpish]

Some, like Firefox 3, we can probably mostly agree on.

Not really. I mean, intentionally making your product less functional (with no way to restore the stripped functionality) generally isn't a good thing.

Re:Awfulbar

[rdwald]

What, the extension that restores the original functionality doesn't count as a "way to restore the stripped functionality"? And saying "adding features I don't like counts as making your product less functional" is kind of cheating.

Re:Awfulbar

[AceofSpades19]

I really don't understand why everyone hates the awesome bar so much

Re:Awfulbar

[wizardforce]

that and broken/less functional extensions, some buggy, broken and others that the creators don't bother to update, not mozilla's fault but still, most of the reason a lot of us geeks use FF is due to the extensions it has... Oh and on a completely unrelated note, the KDE3.5.x branch isn't even in the ubuntu repos any more, though there are unofficial repos for the branch [sorry but KDE4 although pretty, is otherwise crippled] here is the repo for KDE 3.5.x Ibex in case anyone wanted it:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/kb9vqf/ubuntu [total of two one for each main and source] although something of note is boxee and songbird which are pretty new [boxee being in alpha] both are worth a look.

Re:Awfulbar

[AceofSpades19]

Have you even actually tried kde 4.1? or are you still going on, on what it was like in kde 4.0?

Re:Awfulbar

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you describe links in the future? I thought you were complaining about removing gopher:// support for a while there.

Re:Awfulbar

[SanityInAnarchy]

Not sure about GP, but I have. Here's a rant.

Re:Awfulbar

[Inner_Child]

Nor do I. After a short period of time using it, it's gotten quite good at predicting what I'm looking for. I'm not sure I'd want to go back to Firefox 2.x after getting used to it.

Re:Awfulbar

[AceofSpades19]

I think its a case of "OMG SOMETHING DIFFERENT I HATE IT", rather then a rational reason of why people hate it

Re:Awfulbar

[wizardforce]

yes i've used it, and KDE 4.2... the menu is broken [on 4.1 and 4.2 menu editing doesn't work properly], misc little annoyances mostly to do with the removal of certain customizations... plasmoids... pretty but why is it that I can't use the original desktop layout? nothing to whine about but it seems to me that KDE4 tried to herd people into a new way to use the desktop for no good reason. No matter, the menu bug is what annoyed me, I build my desktop for efficiency and I tell you that having menu entries very nearly randomly placed is annoying after lanching programs a few hundred times... I chose KDE3.5 over other desktop environments because it was the most customizable [without going into the text files dang it] and had a few neat things to make the desktop a nice place to be, now it's KDE4 trying to be very pretty [which is nice but I'd rather it be efficient and hideous than where it is now] Even the KDE devs admit that it still isn't there yet [a bit of functionality was restored with the 4.1 and 4.2 releases however] What was done with KDE4 I think was a mistake. trying to rewrite from the ground up with the Qt4.x should have been the first step with each new release adding functionality *not removing it*
I'm sorry to say that it isn't just me that took issue with the KDE4 trunk, a lot of people don't like where KDE is going and for [I believe] good reason.

Re:Awfulbar

[sveard]

Your link does not work

Re:Awfulbar

[Toonol]

No, simply that it's new isn't a problem. A few reasons:

1) It's big, ugly, and distracting, mixing a variety of font sizes, italics, etc. (That's my subjective opinion).

2) It is unpredictable, hence less useful. It used to bring up URLs that were previously typed in the field, that began with the letters typed. Now it searches other places and other fields, in a way that is not obvious, and can change unpredictably. My son was complaining about how the webcomic he reads keeps on turning up multiple times in the "awesomebar", because every strip has a different title.

3) It can pull up results that were never typed into the bar. That's non-intuitive; it should use the same 'type-ahead' system of selecting from previous entries that would work for other fields, such as html input fields. Don't make a crazy new interface for one field; make a interface that works sensibly for all fields.

4) It's marketing-driven. It was given a ridiculous name, and seemingly was at the top of a 'new 3.0 feature' bullet list that Mozilla wanted to 'push'... Then they removed options (which existed in the betas) to switch between the new and old configuration. That's skirting close to BIG BAD COMPANY behavior.

Doesn't it remind you of how the search feature in every MS OS has been getting worse and worse every version, despite the added features?

Re:Awfulbar

[Mr_eX9]

I rarely use it but I don't understand the hate either. It's easy enough to ignore when you don't need it.

Re:Awfulbar

[AceofSpades19]

No, simply that it's new isn't a problem. A few reasons: 1) It's big, ugly, and distracting, mixing a variety of font sizes, italics, etc. (That's my subjective opinion).

I don't notice the fonts at all, they look pretty standardised to me

2) It is unpredictable, hence less useful. It used to bring up URLs that were previously typed in the field, that began with the letters typed. Now it searches other places and other fields, in a way that is not obvious, and can change unpredictably. My son was complaining about how the webcomic he reads keeps on turning up multiple times in the "awesomebar", because every strip has a different title.

I can kind of see your point here but, I find that its pretty predictable myself

3) It can pull up results that were never typed into the bar. That's non-intuitive; it should use the same 'type-ahead' system of selecting from previous entries that would work for other fields, such as html input fields. Don't make a crazy new interface for one field; make a interface that works sensibly for all fields. 4) It's marketing-driven. It was given a ridiculous name, and seemingly was at the top of a 'new 3.0 feature' bullet list that Mozilla wanted to 'push'... Then they removed options (which existed in the betas) to switch between the new and old configuration. That's skirting close to BIG BAD COMPANY behavior.

I wasn't aware that mozilla was a big company to begin with.

Doesn't it remind you of how the search feature in every MS OS has been getting worse and worse every version, despite the added features?

The search feature in windows hasn't really changed much between windows 98 and windows xp that I know of, I haven't used vista so I can't comment on it, but if they got rid of that dog I would say that is a plus ;)

Re:Awfulbar

[FishWithAHammer]

I hate how the awesome bar looks. It's big and clunky. Hence, OldBar.

I love how the awesome bar works, though. Big plus to Mozilla for it.

Re:Awfulbar

[SomeKDEUser]

OK. Bullshit. The original desktop layout is in fact an option in 4.2.

Actually, the old-style menu is also. And if you really care about efficiency, ALT-F2 is your friend, not a menu.

No features were removed, the foundations were rebuilt. KDE 4.2 is pretty much were 3.5 was in terms of desktop features. In a quarter of the time. So it _was_ worth the pain.

Every bit of it. Because sometimes, there is no other way, if API and binary compatibility is going to be kept through the whole 4.x.

Re:Awfulbar

[Fri13]

Even the KDE 4.2 is beta 2 state, it is better than Windows Vista UI or comes very close, if not over the Mac OS X. Just wait the KDE 4.3 and you get even better... it is just over 6 months waiting ;-)

So many judges the KDE4 by the test runs what they have got with KDE 4.0.x and 4.1.3 series. KDE4 is not 4.0.x but currently it is the 4.1.3 version. And you should not judge the KDE4 by one distributor what has done some stupid desicions by backporting stuff from 4.2 development branch, what ain't ready and will just crash all. Kubuntu is one of the distributions what is _terrible_ with it. Even it is KDE centric distribution, it has failed to offer a normal users great desktop experience.

Re:Awfulbar

[Anonymous Coward]

On slower PCs it isn't. It sometimes may take several seconds to process a single letter you typed!
Either you type blindly or entering a new URL may easily take you half a minute.
(it gets better once it has all the history cached in RAM or whatever it does the first time, it is still horrible performance-wise though).

Re:Awfulbar

[Anonymous Coward]

And by the time what you used to type that whining here, you could be added or voted 2-5 bugs on the bugs.kde.org site to get things fixed.

Re:Awfulbar

[Anonymous Coward]

1. So it shows the title of the page in a different font than the URL. And it highlights the letters you typed in the text. Seems quite reasonable to me.
How would you do that? To not make any difference between URL and title seems quite stupid to me.

2. & 3. "OMG SOMETHING DIFFERENT I HATE IT"

4. It is open source! Ridiculous names is what we are best at.

Re:Awfulbar

[nbates]

No, simply that it's new isn't a problem. A few reasons:

1) It's big, ugly, and distracting, mixing a variety of font sizes, italics, etc. (That's my subjective opinion).

I don't see what you mean with variety of font sizes, italics, etc... It looks good once you get used to it.

2) It is unpredictable, hence less useful. It used to bring up URLs that were previously typed in the field, that began with the letters typed. Now it searches other places and other fields, in a way that is not obvious, and can change unpredictably. My son was complaining about how the webcomic he reads keeps on turning up multiple times in the "awesomebar", because every strip has a different title.

The bar is supposed to guess what you want, not the other way around. I also think it adapts to what you choose when searching.

I don't have to type more than 3 letters to get exactly where I want.

Maybe you shouldn't try to predict what the bar will do and instead let the bar predict what you want.

4) It's marketing-driven. It was given a ridiculous name, and seemingly was at the top of a 'new 3.0 feature' bullet list that Mozilla wanted to 'push'... Then they removed options (which existed in the betas) to switch between the new and old configuration. That's skirting close to BIG BAD COMPANY behavior.

Ridiculous name? Unlike many other open source products?

Doesn't it remind you of how the search feature in every MS OS has been getting worse and worse every version, despite the added features?

No, it reminds me of how google toolbar does a great job at searching for everything in my desktop.

The only thing you didn't mention, and I could have agreed with that, is the issue of performance. The awesomebar can get really slow (unlike google toolbar, which searches my whole computer much faster) and that's something I dislike. But it is a common problem in firefox as a whole (it can take long to startup, long to shutdown, slow to run web applications, etc)

As for the functionality, I'm really glad they added it. Versatile search and tagging functionality are two great features in my experience.

I don't use history anymore, and bookmarks were replaced by tags.

That said, what features of firefox 3 do you need? I mean, why can't you just roll back to firefox 2 if you don't like ff3?

Re:Awfulbar

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its a case of "OMG SOMETHING DIFFERENT I HATE IT", rather then a rational reason of why people hate it

I hate the awful bar because they took something that worked perfectly well and utterly fucked with it.

And they utterly fucked with it in such a way that the original use of the address bar has gone (about 15 years of consistent behaviour), and features of other parts of the browser have been copied to the bar (searching history etc.).

I also feel that the awful bar comes across as a feature aimed squarely at those who want and need hand-holding. I don't like it when a product gets dumbed down, but once a product decides to go after the mass market this is inevitable.

Firefox now is also miles from its original philosophy of being lean and fast, with support for extensions for when users want to add features. Firefox should be not much more than a box that can render HTML, do JS and display images. If you want plug-ins, then you install the plug-in extension and then your plug-ins (flash etc.). If you want adblocking, you install adblock. If you want your hand holding because protocol://server.domain.tld/path/file.ext is too complicated for you to cope with then install the awfulbar extension.

If Mozilla wanted to go after the mass market, why didn't they just fix all the issues with FF2 and release FF3 as the fixed FF2 with some select extensions? The awful bar is precisely the type of thing that should be an extension, and it has driven away some of the longest time supporters and advocates of FF.

And to add insult to injury, they have stopped supporting FF2, so there isn't even a safe and bearable version of FF any more.

(Wow, what an apt captcha: infamous)

Re:Awfulbar

[darthflo]

As usual, Opera has done it before and done it better: Quick Find paragraph.

Re:Awfulbar

[Anonymous Coward]

4) It's marketing-driven. It was given a ridiculous name, and seemingly was at the top of a 'new 3.0 feature' bullet list that Mozilla wanted to 'push'... Then they removed options (which existed in the betas) to switch between the new and old configuration. That's skirting close to BIG BAD COMPANY behavior.

I wasn't aware that mozilla was a big company to begin with.

That's the best counter argument you can come up with? And you've had to take what Toonol said out of context to come up with that counter point.

He said that forcing the awful bar on the users is big bad company behaviour, and I am very inclined to agree. One of the reasons I am trying to get away from proprietary software is because they will make seemingly arbitrary changes to a product just to support their business model, and the user just has to suffer those changes.

But Mozilla is a non-profit entity, so there is no clear reason why they would behave like a big bad company.

Re:Awfulbar

[AceofSpades19]

4) It's marketing-driven. It was given a ridiculous name, and seemingly was at the top of a 'new 3.0 feature' bullet list that Mozilla wanted to 'push'... Then they removed options (which existed in the betas) to switch between the new and old configuration. That's skirting close to BIG BAD COMPANY behavior.

I wasn't aware that mozilla was a big company to begin with.

That's the best counter argument you can come up with? And you've had to take what Toonol said out of context to come up with that counter point.

He said that forcing the awful bar on the users is big bad company behaviour, and I am very inclined to agree. One of the reasons I am trying to get away from proprietary software is because they will make seemingly arbitrary changes to a product just to support their business model, and the user just has to suffer those changes.

But Mozilla is a non-profit entity, so there is no clear reason why they would behave like a big bad company.

If so many people hate, why don't you guys just fork it and then you don't have to deal with "Big Bad Company" behavior

Re:Awfulbar

[Anonymous Coward]

The other problem is one of privacy. If I am typing something into the location bar while someone else is watching, I don't really want them to see all the stuff that shows up.

[Eg facebook message titles, christmas presents that have been purchased, financial transactions,...]

Victory!

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Source has accomplished its mission and conquered our economy. With no one able to afford the proprietary products anymore, it's one big step closer to world domination.

Wine

[3p1ph4ny]

Uh, Wine went 1.0? How is this not on the list, but Google Chrome is? Chrome isn't even open source, Chromium is.

Re:Wine

[3vi1]

Mod parent up!

Re:Wine

[martijnd]

Seconded -- Wine is making amazing progress, just check the biweekly changelogs to see how much progress its making.

If this keeps up Linux becomes a solid games platform.

Re:Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the same thing when i saw Chrome on the list. Why is it there yeah is a nice product but its not open souce, lacked initial Linux support AND there is so many other importent milestones for the *NIX platforms this year

Re:Wine

[wisty]

Yep, Wine is the coolest thing since Linux. You know it's there, and you know it's geeky and patchy, and you could just buy Windows and avoid all the bother, but sooner or later - BAMM it will be the obvious choice. (I write this from a Mac, but I still say that Linux + GNU + any good package manager is the obvious choice for an operating system - I just like my iLife, MS Office, and TextMate; and I like pretending to be a member of an oppressed minority).

Re:Wine

[Tubal-Cain]

You ARE an oppressed minority. There's just about barely more mac os users on the interwebs than linux users.

Since when did Linux have 8.9% marketshare?

Re:Wine

[cgenman]

Chrome got a lot of buzz and people talking this year. It also has a pretty solid / minimalistic interface UI, and brings forth some interesting ideas in browsing (generated start pages and dynamic searching comes to mind). Also, while Google has always been supportive of Mozilla, them putting their weight behind a browser *could* become quite significant.

Also, my understanding is that Chromium is Chrome with the logo / branding stripped out for trademark reasons, similar to Netscape / Mozilla in the early days. To say that they're separate at the moment is like arguing Linux vs Gnu/Linux. One's technically righter than the other, but they still both work.

And yes, Wine hitting 1.0 needs to be on that list.

Re:Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

*hic!* Absoltively, posilutely! *hic!*

Re:Wine

[FishWithAHammer]

Not open source? Wrong.

Re:Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac only has that marketshare in the US. Outside of the US and a select few European countries Macs are almost non-existent.

Re:Wine

[coaxial]

Yeah, but after more than 10 years of being less than 1.0, is that really an achievement, or more just admitting that there has been a stable releases for years now?

Re:Wine

[Tubal-Cain]

The metric was percentage of computers connected to the Internet.
US Windows computers (I will assume this is 50% of computers online for this example) + Non-US Windows computers (40%) = 90% of computers online
Macs (almost entirely US machines, you say) = 9% of computers online.

Apple's US marketshare would be 9/50, or 18%

Re:Wine

[Fri13]

Hey! At least Wine was relased! Do you not remember the Duke Nukem Forever?! Over 12 years and it mayby it comes this year... we sould finally get more than just wo preview videos and few screenshots.

Re:Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. As someone living in Northern Europe I can confirm that macs are pretty much everywhere. As laptops mostly but as I work in an advertising company there are of course a lot of desktops too...

Not that the situation was best possible. Apple has done it's fair share of dirty tricks too (trying to automatically spread Safari on windows as a quicktime update and the Windows version of Safari being horrible piece of crap). But two large and competing evil companies ALWAYS is better than just one having a monopoly.

Re:Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketshare =! users

Never did, never will.

Re:Wine

[coaxial]

"Release" is a meaningless concept in open source. What's "released" when you can get the software at any point you want?

Re:Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did Macs have a 8.9% marketshare?.

Please keep in mind that we are talking about the full interweb, not just the US.

What is best in life

[Anonymous Coward]

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their fanboys!

There are no "victories"...

[John Hasler]

...because there is no war.

Re:There are no "victories"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod up.

Re:There are no "victories"...

[miknix]

please mod parent up

Re:There are no "victories"...

[bakedpatato]

ditto

Re:There are no "victories"...

[Draek]

On all software projects, specially F/OSS ones, there's always a 'war' against stagnation, and things like Python 3 and Mono 2.0 are such huge advances compared to what came before, that they can easily be considered victories in such a 'war'.

Yes, it may sound a little like the "War on Terror", but at least in this case we all know it's just poetic language ;)

Re:There are no "victories"...

[buchner.johannes]

Also, Open Source shines through constant progress in bug fixing and adding feature, community support. It is seldom that there is a abrupt change within such a short time as a year. ;-)

Re:There are no "victories"...

[Like2Byte]

When your opponent believes that you and he are not in a war, you have achieved 99% victory. When your opponent believes no one is at war with him he is a fool.

There is very much a campaign against open source and very much a campaign against closed source.

For example: There were many office suites until Microsoft entered the arena...then most fell. The OSS answer was OO.o and probably others.

IBM vs Sun
IBM vs Microsoft
Windows vs Linux
Windows vs Mac
Office vs OO.c
IE vs Moz/Firefox

then there was

Google Chrome vs Firefox.

I think the Mozilla Foundation is very nervous that Google created Chrome as Google is a major sponser of the Mozilla project. How long will it be before Google decides the marriage is no longer viable?

No war? I have to disagree.

Re:There are no "victories"...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self." Aristotle

One not need to be at war to achieve victory, an accomplishment of a goal will do quite nicely.

1 : the overcoming of an enemy or antagonist
2 : achievement of mastery or success in a struggle or endeavor against odds or difficulties
Merriam-Webster

Re:There are no "victories"...

[digitalchinky]

Mozilla made 75 million dollars in 2007, a little less in 2006. They have a healthy number of zero's in their bank account. I don't think anything other than fast cars, hookers, and beer are on the horizon for anyone in their executive.

Re:There are no "victories"...

[FishWithAHammer]

You...do know that Chrome is open source, right? Chromium is Chrome with the Google trademarks and indicia removed.

Re:There are no "victories"...

[Anonymous Coward]

and just when you think you've won, your opponent--who was never really defeated--knocks you out.

Re:There are no "victories"...

[R15I23D05D14Y]

Victory doesn't have to imply something as strong as war. It is possible to be victorious over self, or in a friendly struggle.

Re:There are no "victories"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some less fanatic people would call that competition.

In general the difference is:
Competition is healthy, war is deadly.

Re:There are no "victories"...

[Basje]

There are victors and losers in any game. There's no need to go to war.

In a war there's only losers.

In all seriousness...

[bacon volcano]

It wouldn't surprise me to see the current economic climate steer more business and home users to open-source alternatives to the software they currently use.

Nevermind, I forgot about bit torrent there for a second...

Mono 2

[N!NJA]

wont feel like a victory if MS decides to pull the carpet off everyone's feet someday. to my mind, the phrase "walking on eggs" illustrates perfectly the situation of those developing or relying on Mono.

Re:Mono 2

[Anonymous Coward]

People are fooling themselves with mono, by helping Microsoft push .NET adoption.

A victory for mono is a victory for Microsoft, NOT for open-source.

Re:Mono 2

[FishWithAHammer]

When you learn what estoppel means, you will know why that is extremely unlikely to happen.

Re:Mono 2

[ubernostrum]

When you learn what estoppel means, you will know why that is extremely unlikely to happen.

I assume what you actually mean is "laches", not "estoppel" (since laches is the specific type of estoppel asserted in, e.g., patent-infringement defenses), but it seems you've failed to note that a successful laches defense leaves open the possibility that future infringement will be barred and/or subject to damages even though damages or injunctions for past infringement are not awarded.

(of course, IANAL, but I've spent more time than is good for me studying IP law)

Google Chrome

[cleatsupkeep]

What about Google Chrome? I know it's currently only Windows only, but it's a very good browser and Open Source.

Re:Google Chrome

[djcapelis]

What about Google Chrome? I know it's currently only Windows only, but it's a very good browser and Open Source.

You mean the one that's the second item on the list in the article? That Google Chrome?

Re:Google Chrome

[cleatsupkeep]

And it's in the article. Yay me.

Re:Google Chrome

[cleatsupkeep]

Yeah, didn't see anyone else had posted it, and for good reason.

Re:Google Chrome

[djcapelis]

I know everyone says that no one on slashdot reads the articles. But the big secret is that's supposed to be a joke, not a rule.

Re:Google Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it really is a rule. RTFA is hard and it takes mad clicking skillz. It's much easier to read 500 comments than RTFA, even if you have to pull the little slidy thing to "Full" and click "More" 5 times so you can get your AC nigger fix.

Whatever

[ARos]

Agree with the 'Nokia ad' poster. Why does TrollTech's being acquired by Nokia equate to an open source victory? Was the Sun acquisition of MySQL an open source victory? Setting milestone releases for major projects aside, the biggest news for 2009 will be the economy. Look for major government adoptions; however, be on the lookout for many more GPL lawsuits...

Agree on FF3?

[Anonymous Coward]

After the number of issues I've had in viewing pages between FF3 and IE7 I'm on the verge of dropping FF altogether.
 
It's odd but I'm starting to think I'm going to have to switch continuously between various browsers because I left IE after their problems with Flash. I was pleased with FF and suddenly they fumbled the ball too.
 
And the real bitch of it all? FF has decided to update itself on older machines without ever asking me first. I was told by most OSS fanatics that only Microsoft does that. WTF?

Re:Agree on FF3?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd recommend SeaMonkey, if you're coming from Firefox. It comes with flash installed (or is this something that you don't want?), I've never had it auto-update on me, and it's mostly firefox extention compatible (you may have to change either the browser ID or the string in the xpi, but it's compatible). It's also much lighter and faster than Firefox.

Re:Agree on FF3?

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks. I'm not dropping more software on my PC hoping for the best. IE 7 is working fine for me at this point.

Re:Agree on FF3?

[Toonol]

I'm not there yet, but it's headed that way. A year ago this would have seemed impossible, but with 3.0, it really seems that FF has changed course, and is headed in an unpleasant direction. They seem to be wanting their user to adapt to their changes, rather than continue to change for the user. Has Mozilla established a marketing group? That's what it seems (unpleasantly) like.

I'll probably switch to Opera, though, before IE.

Re:Agree on FF3?

[CarpetShark]

One word: webkit.

Re:Agree on FF3?

[lamapper]

And the real bitch of it all? FF has decided to update itself on older machines without ever asking me first. I was told by most OSS fanatics that only Microsoft does that. WTF?

I am using FF 3.0.5 and it DOES NOT auto update unless I want it too. You can still set FF to avoid this. The same can NOT be stated for most, if not all Microsoft products, including I.E.

This is the reason I stopped using Windows as an operating system also, mid way through Windows 2000, you could set it to NOT update without approval but it would update anyway.

Even if Microsoft changed this so that you could control it again, I would never go back to Microsoft as they have lost my trust.

Often I have to use Microsoft in my business setting, only because I am NOT given a choice. Which is the only reason I have experience with XP that has shown me that nothing changed...it auto updates as well.

I am constantly amazed at how many people do NOT monitor their network, and are unaware of their loss in control over their desktop until a problem occurs.

If you are not in control of your data and your IT infrastructure, you could be put out of business when an update fails or software fails the authorization process due to multiple hardware changes. This business RISK is too high IMO.

You can tell me it is unlikely, but you CAN NOT tell me it is impossible, as others have found out to their chagrin.

As an IT Manager I prefer to let my employees use the desktop environment that will make them the most productive for the company, even if it is Microsoft or MacIntosh. Whenever possible I allow Linux as an option as well, sadly I am not always given the same option.

Re:Developer Laments: "What Killed FreeBSD"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, a bit tl;dr for me but I do agree with the whole, "some fights just aren't worth fighting for" thing. Most of us have lives to lead or get back to. The fun kind of went off without us. It would be nice to get it back in the building again.

AMD Anyone?

[Josejx]

I can't believe nobody mentioned AMD open sourcing all of the Radeon documentation. That's some of the biggest open source news this year imho.

Re:AMD Anyone?

[DragonTHC]

really? people still use the Radeon?

"Now all restaurants are taco bell."

Re:AMD Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

All? I'm still waiting for acceleration on my rv635.

Re:AMD Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe nobody mentioned $PROJECT either!

Re:AMD Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. They've caught up to nVidia recently in terms of price/performance. Posting as AC cuz I'm too lazy to get a source

Re:AMD Anyone?

[Symbolis]

I'm currently using a Radeon HD 4850. It's nice.

Re:AMD Anyone?

[FishWithAHammer]

The Radeon 48xx cards kick the snot out of comparatively priced nVidia cards.

Re:AMD Anyone?

[ion.simon.c]

Yeppers.
My AGP x800 (R420) isn't all that bad! Version 6.9.0 of xf86-video-ati is pretty decent, too. NB: I haven't tried playing the Linux version of Doom 3. However Neverball works aiiight.

Re:AMD Anyone?

[rnswebx]

Really? I've found them to be fairly close in benchmarks I've read, with the Nvidia cards generally holding the edge. (Primarily comparing gtx 260 vs 4870) Can you show me any benchmarks within the last month or so that would possibly change my mind?

Techgage - GTX 260-216 vs 4870
Hexus - GTX 260-216 vs 4870

The GTX 295 looks like it will dominate the 4870x2 once it's released (supposedly in January)

xtreview - GTX 295 vs 4870x2
Fudzilla - GTX 295 vs 4870x2

Re:AMD Anyone?

[brit74]

really? people still use the Radeon?

Huh?
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/Half-Life-2-Episode-2,765.html

Re:AMD Anyone?

[ion.simon.c]

Those performance margins right up to the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro CF were statistically insignificant. The big gain that I see on the horizon for my box is an upgrade to a PCI-E card. (Hooray for high-speed symmetric transmissions!)

Re:AMD Anyone?

[pdusen]

They're still releasing new Radeons, and half the time they're better than nVidia's offerings, so yes, people still use them.

Re:AMD Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck is it that whenever I watch any classic old action movie, I see a quote on /. the very same day?

Seriously, am I being stalked here?

Re:AMD Anyone?

[Brandybuck]

I'm still waiting for open source drivers that work. Until then there's no way you can call it a victory.

I'm building a new computer this month, but I have no idea what video card to use. I need something that works with new KDE4 desktop, but still has stable Open Source drivers. I suspect such a thing does not actually exist.

free software victories

[Anonymous Coward]

of the so-called "open source" victories, the important ones are the free software victories. The movement did well this year!

KDE simply isn't a factor

[Rix]

KDE is a very nice desktop environment, but that's academic. QT's restrictive licensing essentially blocks all non-GPL activity on KDE.

QT is a very nice library, but it doesn't have anything over it's competitors to justify $4,000 per developer per year (or whatever it is now; Trolltech is too ashamed of itself to publicly list its fees). Until that changes, Gnome will necessarily be the de facto open source desktop.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[betterunixthanunix]

Except that you do not need to write KDE apps or Qt apps for your program to run properly in KDE. You can run GTK applications in KDE, I do it all the time, and it is not a problem at all.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Catch up with the times, QT 2.2 was released under LGPL. The license issue is no longer an issue and is old news.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[wizardforce]

QT's restrictive licensing essentially blocks all non-GPL activity on KDE.

Qt4 has been released under GPLv3, Qt has been under the GPL since 2005, that's four years it's been free.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Anonymous Coward]

QT's restrictive licensing essentially blocks all non-GPL activity on KDE.

Qt4 has been released under GPLv3, Qt has been under the GPL since 2005, that's four years it's been free.

That's precisely what makes it restrictive. The fact that Qt is GPL means that any program that links Qt in must also be GPL. Were Qt LGPL then you could choose any old license you wanted to for your own code, but Nokia has no reason to do that. The funny part is that the GNU zealots should love Qt because of this.

I've been happily using Qt since the 1.x days when KDE beta 1 came out. I didn't care about its license then and I don't care now, because the code works fine for me. But there's no question that its license restricts its usage more than a library released under the Lesser GPL or a BSD license.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[FishWithAHammer]

Yes, and that essentially blocks all non-GPL activity on KDE. It's the primary reason why I stick to Windows as a platform (because I won't write code under the GPL, certainly won't pay for a Qt license, and I don't like GNOME or GTK+).

What's your point?

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[FishWithAHammer]

Oh, and before some idiot comes in with "hurf durf we don't want your PROPRIETAAAAAAAARY code!!!111", note that I release code under the MPL and/or BSD licenses as the situation calls for--but not the rights-restrictive GPL. Developers deserve freedom too, not just downstream users.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[timmarhy]

yep, gpl is a nightmare to manage, not to mention how misunderstand and militant it's supporters are.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[shutdown -p now]

QT is a very nice library, but it doesn't have anything over it's competitors to justify $4,000 per developer per year (or whatever it is now; Trolltech is too ashamed of itself to publicly list its fees).

I would dispute that. Can you name any other C++ library that is as powerful and all-encompassing, fast, and has the same great kind of tooling (don't forget about Eclipse and VS integration!)?

In reality, Qt is the only option I am aware of that can bring C++ productivity to the level of the likes of Java and .NET. Whether it is worth the price is another matter, but it's not like they have much competition in their niche...

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[stilborne]

"Oh, and before some idiot comes in with "hurf durf we don't want your PROPRIETAAAAAAAARY code!!!111""

the worst thing that can happen when you pre-emptively call other people idiots is showing that you're not so much better yourself in the process.

as you can see here:

http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/license-gpl-exceptions.html

all the licenses you list are just fine, and then some. enjoy.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[ion.simon.c]

Not that it matters (seeing as how Troll Tech can do anything that they want with their code ['cause even though they've released it under the GPL, they still retain the copyright!]), but I wonder what the FSF thinks of TT's GPL exceptions. :) A naive google search doesn't reveal any useful information.

(The somewhat offtopic rant was added for the benefit of the members of the "OMG GOING GPL MEANS YOU CAN NEVAR GO BACK" club, not for you.)

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[ion.simon.c]

http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/license-gpl-exceptions.html

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[brit74]

Catch up with the times, QT 2.2 was released under LGPL. The license issue is no longer an issue and is old news.

Do you have a source for that? All the links I've found on google say that isn't true. For example:
"Qt 2.2 To Be Released Under the GPL" http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/180/
"Qt 2.2 Released under the GPL" http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/qt.php

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Bert64]

The GPL does not restrict usage, it only restricts distribution...
That's why you as an end user don't care, because the restrictions don't affect you.

Restricts isn't even the wrong word, it actually grants you some rights you wouldn't have otherwise (under plain copyright), but doesn't go so far in it's granting of rights as other licenses such as BSD.
The GPL is also a lot less restrictive than virtually all proprietary licenses, but anti-gpl trolls often seem to overlook that fact.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Bert64]

And windows is somehow less restrictive than the GPL?
Windows restricts your personal use of the software, does not provide source code at all and prohibits redistribution of the binaries you do have...

You won't pay for a qt license, but were perfectly happy to pay for a windows license? That's quite a double standard right there...

Also take a look at:
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/license-gpl-exceptions.html

It seems you can write code under various licenses and link it to qt...

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[wrook]

Sigh... I'm giving up my moderations for this...

The FSF has published a fairly straight forward article describing their thoughts on whether software should be released under the GPL or a more permissive license such as the LGPL.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

The exceptions in the Qt license are all free software licenses. Some of them are already compatible with the GPL, but some are not.

This makes the Qt license less restrictive than the GPL, but more restrictive than the LGPL (all of those licenses and more would be acceptable under the LGPL).

The FSF's stated position is that a less restrictive license should be chosen when the library in question doesn't offer advantages that would sway people away from proprietary projects. But the overriding consideration is that the choice of license should try to increase the number of free software contributors.

In the case of Qt, I think it is clear that the exceptions are geared towards allowing people to choose a different free license. The reason (AFAICT) is that otherwise they might go with a different (probably proprietary) option. Thus the exception in the case of Qt is unquestionably good.

In fact, I did a quick google search and found no criticism from the FSF on this subject. Whether you agree with RMS or not, I think we can all agree that he has been very outspoken about his opinion of Qt licensing in the past. Thus, I am sure that the FSF is quite happy with the license as it is.

Hope that helps!

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Read what he wrote dude. You are not allowed to develop non-GPL apps with GPL QT. And developing using non-GPL QT costs $4.000 per developer per year (I've not checked this).
GTK+ on the other hand is LGPL, which allows developing (linking) with closed source applications for free.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Hatta]

He did say "all non-GPL activity". If I understand correctly, the GPL license of the QT toolkit requires all derivative works to be distributed under the same terms, i.e. the GPL.

In contrast the LGPL license of GTK and wxWindows still requires you to contribute your chances to the library but allow you to license your own work however you want. Just linking isn't considered a derivative work under the LGPL, as long as you can still modify the LGPL portion.

So with an LGPL'd library, you can write an application and sell it under whatever license you want. With QT you have to use the GPL or you have to pay for a Q Commercial License. And that's not the worst of it:

You must purchase a Qt Commercial License from Qt Software or from one of its authorized resellers before you start developing commercial software. The Commercial license does not allow the incorporation of code developed with the Open Source Edition of Qt into a commercial product

So if you have a free application that's popular, and you want to release an enhanced edition for a small fee, you can't do that if you've chosen QT. It's a bizarre rule, I can't figure out why they'd want to stop people from giving them money.

None of this matters for the software freedom purist. Personally, I'd prefer everyone just use the GPL. But there are many who won't, for any number of reasons, and for them QT is less attractive because of its licensing.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Anonymous Coward]

We do want "proprietaaaaary code!!!111". In fact, our strong desire for all code is why we release under the GPL license (i.e., if you add code, you are going to have to give it to us). If all we wanted was our own code, we would have used a BSD license (i.e., all you have to do is give us credit).

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[FishWithAHammer]

Huh, nice. Didn't realize that. I may have to track down a Qt book, then.

Thanks!

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[FishWithAHammer]

And that is why you are ethically bankrupt people and why I refuse to use GPLed libraries or other code: because I have no interest in furthering what really is an agenda. :) At least TrollTech, as noted upthread by another poster, makes exceptions for non-cretinous open-source licenses, and so I just might go buy a Qt book.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[w000t]

Get a clue, dude. You are certainly allowed to develop non-GPL apps with GPL Qt, you just have to use one of the other free licenses listed as exceptions .

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Brandybuck]

If I understand correctly, the GPL license of the QT toolkit requires all derivative works to be distributed under the same terms, i.e. the GPL.

You understand wrong. Qt is released with several exceptions to the GPL, allowing you to use any Free Software license, not just the GPL. No, you can't write a proprietary app without buying a license, but you are not limited to just the GPL.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6366

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[ion.simon.c]

Heh. Thanks for giving up your mod opportunity. This was useful information.

I've got to keep in mind that -ultimately- we want to get out as much good, useful source code as possible. Whatever helps advance that goal is a good thing.

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Nick Ives]

You're missing the point. Qt is a library, normally libraries are licensed under the LGPL which is basically the same as the GPL except it allows you to link the GPL code into non-GPL programmes. This allows GNU libc to be used by proprietary applications.

The GP is correct, as a bit of a GNU zealot I loved Trolltech for doing that. It made sense for their business too - if you wanted to use Qt in a proprietary system you had to pay a license fee; for free software it was guaranteed free forever!

Re:KDE simply isn't a factor

[Bert64]

Yes, exactly, so qt still offers more freedom than a typical proprietary library...
You are free to write GPL code, and you can also write proprietary code but you must buy a license to do so.
Proprietary code may have the second option, but not always, and is unlikely to have the first or at least not to the same level.

Sun xVM VirtualBox

[Eric Wayte]

I know it was originally released by InnoTek in 2007, but VirtualBox has really taken off since being acquired by Sun. 3 major releases (1.6, 2.0, 2.1) this year!

Re:Sun xVM VirtualBox

[morgan_greywolf]

VirtualBox isn't truly open source. VirtualBox OSE is crippled. For example, it doesn't support USB.

Re:Sun xVM VirtualBox

[Tubal-Cain]

3 major releases (1.6, 2.0, 2.1) this year!

Big deal. If I write a shell script, revise it twice, and label them as versions 1, 2, and 3, was it as big of an accomplishment?

That's not to say some major improvements haven't been made in VirtualBox, I am just pointing out that version numbers don't mean much

See Also:
Linux Kernel 3.0
Linux Kernel 0.95

Re:Sun xVM VirtualBox

[pdusen]

Right, for all of those times I tried to run my USB missile launcher from a VM. Those VirtualBox bastards! Now I'm losing the office wars!

Re:Sun xVM VirtualBox

[Bert64]

For what reason? Was the original USB code taken from somewhere else and they're not allowed to release it, or are they trying to intentionally differentiate the versions?
What's to stop third parties adding in some new open source usb support code, such code already exists in qemu and may be reusable?

Re:Sun xVM VirtualBox

[morgan_greywolf]

They're intentionally trying to differentiate the versions. It's obvious. The OSE version doesn't have a GUI, doesn't support USB, doesn't support a virtual SATA adapter, doesn't support VRDP, etc.

Re:Sun xVM VirtualBox

[slimjim8094]

It has a GUI. Stop talking out your ass.

The rest of the missing features, I'll give you that - I needed to jailbreak my iPhone and needed USB support.

Oh well - I'm pragmatic. I finally switched off of Windows, and I want it to stay that way.

Re:Sun xVM VirtualBox

[Anonymous Coward]

You know where the source is... Go and patch it! And you're on /., no not-a-programmer excuses!

The problem with lists

[Facetious]

I read the list in TFA, and generally agree that these are decent to good projects, but I think articles like this miss the point in large measure. I use gvSIG and Quantum GIS for part of my job (GIS). I use Drupal for another part of my job (web admin). Most people, even open source advocates, are likely not aware of all of these projects. They are all open source, but they cater to niches. Thus, they don't make lists. That's fine though. Open source has found its way into every dark corner of software development. I think the phrase "paradigm shift," before it was a buzz phrase, describes what has happened. That these projects and hundreds like them are thriving tells me more about the victory of open source than any top ten list.

Re:The problem with lists

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you sourceforge.net!

Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

Disclaimer: I am using KDE4. I like it for what it could be. As it is, I'm looking at alternatives.

Replace "4.0" with "Vista", "4.1" with "Vista SP1", and "4.2" with "Vista SP2" -- and, for good measure, "3.5" with "XP Pro", and you have a fair sense of what's going on here.

In fact, Microsoft has handled this better -- they still fix bugs in XP.

In KDE4, and in some of the bigger KDE4 apps (like AmaroK), there's this completely new, exciting, amazing version which almost has all the features you needed from the old version, in a very cool-looking but annoyingly different way, and sometimes crashes. Then there's the old, boring, unsupported version, which does everything you want it to do, but has some annoying bugs and deficiencies -- yet whenever you point them out, people close the bug "wontfix" as development has stopped on that branch, and the KDE4 version will be done so differently the bug is irrelevant.

At least Windows has a mostly-working version -- XP. KDE has no working version.

An example of something that worked in 3, but is broken in 4: The panel. Everyone always said, "Don't mind that, it's fixed in 4.1." Well, I'm running 4.1, and I can tell you, it's not even close. How do I make the panel thinner vertically? How do I adjust its translucency -- how do I give it a completely transparent background, but solid foreground?

An example of something that doesn't work anywhere (wontfix in 3, not done yet in 4) is encoding scripts in AmaroK. There's no longer a GUI option to tell AmaroK what your preferred format for a device is -- if you've got an iPod, it's going to give you mp3s, whether you want them or not, even if you can handle AAC just fine. Yet the KDE4 version of AmaroK doesn't yet support encoding scripts in any way, so my choice is mp3s, or no encoding at all. WTF?

Maybe I'm just using the wrong distro? I was pretty appalled at Kubuntu's handling of Intrepid. Bluetooth is broken, due to conflicting versions of a few packages. The only available solutions are, use the commandline (I tried, didn't work), go back to Hardy, or use the Gnome bluetooth GUI.

Isn't that why you use a distro in the first place? So bullshit like this doesn't happen?

Here's hoping by 4.5, they'll finally attain the functionality of 3.5. Maybe they'll still have some users left by then. Meanwhile, I'm going to take a long, hard look at going back to Fluxbox or straight Compiz.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[AceofSpades19]

At least Windows has a mostly-working version -- XP. KDE has no working version.

Is kde 3.5 not mostly working?, or did I misread most of your rant? Have you actually thought about trying any other distros that have kde 4 and see if they have those problems?

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[The Master Control P]

KDE4's panel is one of those things that you figure out and then say "WhereTF was the tutorial for this?" That is, after you figure out that you have to manually add it because it's not there by default. You can right-click where it doesn't have any programs or on the edge, and there's a rectangle you can click+hold and drag to change size I think.

I've got my fair share of complaints about KDE4. kwrite's tabbing - dude, WTF went wrong here? Konqueror's default icon view - Tiny icons AND shitloads of whitespace - sucks, and my sane settings won't seem to save Its file-management performace is heartbreakingly bad. Konq 3.5 and 4 both take some time to generate previews for the 4000 lolcats floating around my documents dir; 3.5 smoothly scrolls while doing so - I right well expect OpenGl-accelerated 4.2beta to. And please, God, make it so that when I switch to konqueror tab Y typing resumes going where it was if I had a textbox selected.

And since you mention Amarok 2 I'll join you in crying about that disappointment. 2.0, to be blunt, stunk, and it really turned me off to KDE4 since 1.4 won't start due to different audio architectures. In hindsight, I think it was the dealbreaker. mp3blaster is nice and mplayer -loop 1000 works, but I like being able to hit meta-z/c/b to go through things.

• A full third of the window is taken by an about-song panel with no obvious way to get rid of it. 1.4 does it right by letting you click an unobtrusive context label on the sidebar.
• Totally screwed up playlist display. Different entries are different sizes? They look like they're vaguely trying to group themselves, but failing. WTH, over! One song = one 12-point bar with name, serial number and rank. And due to the aforementioned about-song taking 1/3 of the screen, I can't get my song info all on one line.
• Gives up too easily. I recently pulled half a gig of random classical MP3s down and tossed 'em into Amarok so I could get a feel. Knowing how p2p is, several were corrupt. Amarok 1.4 will keep trying to play (skipping whatever it can't) until hell freezes over. 2.0 pops up a "too many errors" message inside its window (which will not be seen if it's minimized) and gives up. If it's going to give up that easily, at least make it grab my attention and say why my music keeps stopping.
• My pause button doesn't work! How in the fuck did it get to alpha, let alone release, with a broken pause button? I hit pause, it blinks and goes right back to playing.

Now, I really like KDE 3. I've been using it since whatever came with Mandrake 8.2 was new. I knew KDE 4 would be different, it being a total rework and all. And there are a lot of things I really like that were done really well. The windowing system (sans a few configuration menu fubars), the scribble-on-desktop applet, the color scheme and widgets - awesome job. Konqueror 4 (as long as I don't try to save a file or browse my porn) - awesome job. Yep, that plus Konsole covers 9/10 of what I do. But until at least some of the issues I join SanityInAnarchy in ranting about are fixed, I'm not going to make the full leap (marked by copying my email from ~/.kde to ~/.kde4.

In short, my KDE4 trial left me with the same handful of "If they would just fix this damn annoying thing" complaints that so many would-be Windows users walk away from Linux with. Which is a shame, because as of 4.2beta2 they've got about 90+% of "it" nailed as well as or better than 3.5. I truly think that most of these shenanigans could have been avoided if they'd tested the final RC on 100 people who'd never used the alphas or betas before and fixed the top ten complaints, whatever they were, before going gold.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[FishWithAHammer]

Development on KDE 3.5 has stopped and outstanding bugs, as the poster you replied to said, are marked WONTFIX.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[AceofSpades19]

but I'm pretty sure kde 3.5 mostly works, unless the definition of mostly has changed in recent years

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[FishWithAHammer]

"Mostly works" under KDE 3.5, or "works" under XP.

I wonder which I'm going to choose. And saying that really torques me off, because I like Linux (hate the Linux community as a whole, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish). But it's just not as usable, in any configuration, as a Windows or OS X system.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[AceofSpades19]

I can see OSX being more usable then windows or kde 3.5, but saying that windows is more useable then kde 3.5 is stretching it a bit far. I use both windows and kde 3.5 alot and I find kde 3.5 to be just as useable if not more so then windows xp

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[LoRdTAW]

I wanted to like KDE 4 as I have always had a soft sport for KDE. It was a bloody nightmare when I last tired it. Hopefully things are looking better, and will continue to do so. MAybe I will one day give it a try again.

But one thing KDE 4 taught me was my fathers favorite saying: K.I.S.S. or Keep It Simple, Stupid! I tried and fell in love with Fluxbox and how simple yet flexible and powerful it is. Since first using FB I haven't looked back. Its has a dock for KDE "system tray" icons and all of my KDE and Gnome apps of course run just fine. Some things I do miss are easy to use desktop icons and disk icons but FB has forced (or rater persuaded) me to use the terminal. And I really learned more about Linux that way then using what I now like to call a mickey mouse desktop.

No I am not knocking desktop environments like KDE or Gnome. They tend to hide the complexity like windows or OSX does, which makes fixing problems harder because the GUI hides allot of important information. For example: My friend was playing with a fresh install of Ubuntu 7.10 and could not get any audio from Audacious. He called me and complained how Audacious would open and nothing played. I told him to start Audacious from the terminal and see what it writes to the terminal. Well lo and behold Audacious was trying to use its (I forget) default audio plugin which wasn't working. I told him to switch it to OSS or ALSA and it worked just fine. Point is you learn much more from a more simple environment than one that tries to hide the underpinnings. Hell before Fluxbox I never knew it was possible to change the screen resolution from the command line.

Nothing wrong with desktop environments. I just think simplicity nurtures knowledge when it comes to Linux. I can now comfortably manage a headless server from an ssh session without breaking a sweat or web browser open (well not too often :).

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[uniquegeek]

I thought I finally switched to Kubuntu because of XP?

Granted, my issues with XP mostly weren't related to the UI, but at least Linux gives me other options than "make it look cuter".

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[uniquegeek]

I switched to Xubuntu several months ago in an attempt to salvage my ancient system, so I'm a little fuzzy on KDE in 6.06. I do recall there were some great innovative features that I used a lot (favorite dir paths remembered, simple image operations in the context menu). I recall thinking "programmers would never get the chance to do this corporation-developed OSes". When I finally decided to format and reinstall, I used the newest version of Kubuntu at the time (with kde4) and the system choked. Much slower, and it looked like Vista had barfed all over it... hence the addition and switch to Xfce ("well I guess it's a good time to install that other thing I've been meaning to, then").

Still have a warm fuzzy feeling for KDE 3.whatever_it_was. Not sure what I'll put on my new system when I get it next week, though.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[stilborne]

"KDE has no working version."

3.5 is still out there and used by millions.

"How do I make the panel thinner vertically?"

in 4.1 is was rather "hidden": there's a little strip at the top of the panel controller (right click on the panel -> Panel Settings, or click the toolbox button on the far right of the panel) that you can click and drag on. in 4.2 there's a nice obvious button that says "Height" (or "Width" if it's a vertical panel)

" How do I adjust its translucency"

select a Plasma theme that provides a translucent panel, which the default theme does. it requires compositing (aka "desktop effects") to be working, however.

the fake translucency in kicker was an insane hack (trust me, i did the bulk of the coding to get it to work ;) and it of course wasn't perfect: it only showed your wallpaper, not windows and heaven forbid if the wallpaper was animated or anything like that.

"-- how do I give it a completely transparent background, but solid foreground?:"

use a completely transparent SVG. =) in 4.2 there is a control panel in system settings (in the Advanced area) that lets you mix and match individual SVGs should you wish to.

"Yet the KDE4 version of AmaroK doesn't yet support encoding scripts in any way, so my choice is mp3s, or no encoding at all. WTF?"

yes, there are some features missing in the first "dot-oh" release of Amarok2. there's an Amarok release coming in January that covers a lot of these (rather amazing how fast that goes, really), though i don't know if this is one of them. i do hope you've filed a feature request on bugs.kde.org.

oh, and if you're tempted to say "they should have just held 2.0 until January, then", don't bother: making releases from the code repository is an absolutely requirement to keep open source projects moving, and one of the downsides of that is that often a first release of a new series isn't what a consumer-grade user is going to what to cut their teeth on. that's why there is another step in row, e.g. distributions. not that they seem to always be doing their users the best favours lately in that regard. *shrug*

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Phil Urich]

At least Windows has a mostly-working version -- XP. KDE has no working version.

Is kde 3.5 not mostly working?, or did I misread most of your rant? Have you actually thought about trying any other distros that have kde 4 and see if they have those problems?

That's the thing, in Intrepid you can't chose KDE 3.5 . . . so no, it isn't working. He said, after all, "Maybe I'm just using the wrong distro? I was pretty appalled at Kubuntu's handling of Intrepid." And I entirely, 100% agree, since in Ubuntu/Kubuntu my desktop is almost entirely nonfunctional with KDE4 (and certainly is hugely regressed from Hardy with 3.5, which is why I've stuck with that and not upgraded my primary install).

To be fair, on certain hardware it's less of a problem, and much of it has to do with my usage of TwinView and the proprietary Nvidia binary blob. On my old computer, which I'm using as a test, Intrepid/KDE4 isn't as feature-rich, flexible, and stable as older Ubuntu versions with KDE3.5, but it isn't that far behind and it has some added interesting features. Still, the fact that it's a desktop environment implementation that only works in quite conventional setups, and falls apart quickly in anything atypical, is a pretty big downside. And all the test KDE4 versions I've used, regardless of distro, have been more or less unworkable on my main computer, so it isn't for me yet. Might not be for years now, even.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[orthogonal]

KDE4's panel is one of those things that you figure out and then say "WhereTF was the tutorial for this?" That is, after you figure out that you have to manually add it because it's not there by default. You can right-click where it doesn't have any programs or on the edge, and there's a rectangle you can click+hold and drag to change size I think.

I call this the Microsoft Excel Charting experience: where you have to guess where and how (left-click, right-click,click-and-drag) to click to set various parameters. It's frankly exhausting, more like a crappy game of skill than configuration.

KDE3, conversely, gives me a tree view, and somewhere within that tree are all the settings I need. I may take a bit of time looking through the tree to find what want, but no magical clicking is required, and I don't have to guess what an option does: it's clearly labeled.

KDE4 is a massive step backwards; Gnome, which I've always detested because it's not configurable, is preferable to KDE4. I'm really at a loss as to what the KDE4 team was thinking.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Shakrai]

hate the Linux community as a whole, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish

Boy did you pick the right website ;)

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, there are some features missing in the first "dot-oh" release of Amarok2.

Thank you for confirming that in OSS, "dot-0" has become the new alpha.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, and if you're tempted to say "they should have just held 2.0 until January, then", don't bother: making releases from the code repository is an absolutely requirement to keep open source projects moving, and one of the downsides of that is that often a first release of a new series isn't what a consumer-grade user is going to what to cut their teeth on. that's why there is another step in row, e.g. distributions. not that they seem to always be doing their users the best favours lately in that regard. *shrug*

Although I don't use KDE (nor Gnome at the moment), I have to say that making frequent releases for the benefit of developers is probably best done as "previews", "alphas", or "betas". Or hell, even internal development builds. Not major "point-0" releases. Shifting the blame to distros (which decentralizes it, and lacks any sort of organization) is almost as bad as shifting the blame to users. They have certain expectations of a "point-0" release and shouldn't be tasked with working around beta software released as a major version.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[apoc.famine]

I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. I installed Kubuntu 8.10, and never looked back. KDE 4.2 works fine, and does what I need it to do. Now I don't know if that's because I'm not a GUI-power-user or something, but what the hell?

I know a fair number of people who have had all sorts of issues with KDE 4. I haven't had a single problem. Granted I do most of my power-user work via the terminal, but I would have assumed I'd have seen one of the myriad of issues being reported. I'm trying to think of one, and failing. Maybe somewhat flakey wireless connections on my EEE?

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[HermMunster]

Read this post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1020071

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[FishWithAHammer]

Yes, and according to the ACs who follow me around, I'm apparently a Microsoft troll because I enjoy using .NET (because it's Java, minus the brain damages) and contributed to Mono.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[FishWithAHammer]

OS X is certainly more useful than either, if you can put up with its UI quirks (I personally can't).

And a large part of the usability of Windows comes from having non-crippled software. I use Photoshop, and Krita and the GIMP don't cut it (Krita, I think, has a chance to be awesome; the GIMP, not so much, though I'm hoping the new graphics engine can be used by people who actually know what a decent UI is) and I'm not going to waste time fighting with WINE.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

That's the thing, in Intrepid you can't chose KDE 3.5

I could grab a PPA, or I could grab Hardy. Or I could use Intrepid and KDE4, but fall back to KDE3 for half the packages -- Amarok2 isn't done, so Amarok will be using the KDE3 libs, as will networkmanager (thus breaking kwallet integration)...

it isn't that far behind and it has some added interesting features.

And yet, the fact that it is behind is a big slap in the face. I've told people not to upgrade to KDE4, and I'm about to start telling them to go back to Windows. It's that bad.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

You can right-click where it doesn't have any programs or on the edge, and there's a rectangle you can click+hold and drag to change size I think.

Let me put it this way: Once I unlock the widgets, I can open a "configuration" system. In there are about five or ten controls with absolutely no means of labeling them -- not even tooltips.

Ah, I see it. So I made my panel smaller, and almost everything works... Except the clock is broken. It was always broken, but at least I could read the time before. Now the time is chopped off on the top, and the date is chopped off left/right.

WTF? Did anyone even test this?

2.0, to be blunt, stunk, and it really turned me off to KDE4 since 1.4 won't start due to different audio architectures.

See, I have 1.4 working just fine, except for the bug I mentioned. The WONTFIX because you WILL upgrade to Amarok2, which is missing half the features.

And there are a lot of things I really like that were done really well.

I'll agree there. Personally, the most obvious thing I'd miss is alt+f2 (it was too easy to make katapult screw up); okular (kpdf scrolls by some amount less than a page, can't rotate the display, etc); and Konqueror4 just works with a lot more pages (Pandora, for example).

In fact, that alone is a big deal -- that plus Flash 10 means that, for example, I can just fire up a Konqueror window on Pandora and leave it running. On Hardy, I'd have to use Firefox, which means if Flash screws up in some other Firefox window, or if Firefox crashes, the music goes away.

Not sure what you mean about saving a file or browsing porn... though one other feature I kind of miss is the ability to click+drag a link to a konsole, and have it paste a kfmclient command, not just the URL. That way, it goes into KDE's cache, and gives me a nice GUI progress bar. As it is, I have to choose between pasting it there and typing 'wget', or navigating back to that folder via the GUI -- lame.

as of 4.2beta2 they've got about 90+% of "it" nailed as well as or better than 3.5.

Unfortunately, the other 10% are things people really need working.

They've somehow done the 80/20 rule, backwards.

I truly think that most of these shenanigans could have been avoided if they'd tested the final RC on 100 people who'd never used the alphas or betas

I think a single person might have made a difference.

The problem is, this is a desktop environment. Sure, I could've stayed, I could've assumed it was a bug in documentation or UI if I couldn't figure something out (and not just my own stupidity). Or I could've spent my time actually using my computer, in a mostly-working fashion, for things like working, you know, for money.

But the real question here is: Did no one on the Amarok core team actually use it for long enough to figure out how to make a fucking pause button work? Did no one ever actually use the clock applet in the panel?

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Matt Perry]

"KDE has no working version."

3.5 is still out there and used by millions.

Then that should be a clue that the KDE developers need to still be fixing bugs in 3.5.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Risen888]

I'm not going to argue DEs with you, but I can report that the panel complaints you raise are fixed in 4.2.

Okay, maybe I'll argue a little. What the hell, it's Slashdot.

I use KDE 4 not for what it could be, but for what it is. Better. Kwin alone is so improved, so much faster, so much more feature-rich, that I'd be using KDE 4 if that were the only improvement. But it's not.

Plasma is a giant leap forward into the future of the desktop metaphor. It's light-years beyond anything anyone else is doing, and already more functional than kicker and kdesktop were. Koffice 2, bugs, weird layout and all, is the only place where any innovation is happening in office suites at all, anywhere by anyone.

On a more general level, the whole desktop just feels faster than KDE 3 ever was on this hardware. Yeah, really precise and objective measurement there, I know, but there it is. And it seems to get faster with every update, which God knows wasn't the case with KDE 3.

Do I have problems? Hell yes. Kontact likes to hang on start, and damned if I've figured it out yet. Last week something in my plasmarc was causing the entire desktop to hang on login, I never figured it out, had to blow away kontactrc since which it seems to be running fine. Amarok...well, I think you covered that.

I could go on with both pros and cons, but it's been hashed out to death around here already. Ultimately, my position is this: Yeah, there's problems. Some fairly glaring ones, still, that frustrate the hell out of me every day. But the pros are totally worth it. There have been "Goddammit" moments, but there have way more "Holy crap, that's awesome!" moments. Worth it.

And for cryin' out loud, somebody's got to take some risks here. Somebody's got to try to move forward even if hurts a little bit. God knows it ain't Gnome.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

3.5 is still out there and used by millions.

And is no longer maintained, to the point where big, obvious, probably easy-to-fix bugs are ignored, because it's in 3.5, not 4.x.

Either one is going to give me showstopper bugs.

in 4.1 is was rather "hidden": there's a little strip at the top of the panel controller (right click on the panel -> Panel Settings, or click the toolbox button on the far right of the panel) that you can click and drag on.

Thanks, someone else just pointed that out to me.

I've also noticed how when I do this, it breaks the clock applet more than it was before.

the fake translucency in kicker was an insane hack (trust me, i did the bulk of the coding to get it to work ;) and it of course wasn't perfect: it only showed your wallpaper, not windows and heaven forbid if the wallpaper was animated or anything like that.

Yes, I understand that. It would be nice if the real translucency/transparency at least provided the same features, though.

I said "adjust" its translucency, not "make it translucent by whatever the theme designer wants it to be."

use a completely transparent SVG. =)

Great, thanks. You realize in 3.5, this was a slider control. I should not have to build a fucking SVG to get basic functionality back.

i do hope you've filed a feature request on bugs.kde.org.

What, "Please support everything Amarok 1 did"? This seems kind of obvious. Maybe I should post it just so they realize there are people with iPods who have files other than mp3s to put on them.

No, I'm done. I'll keep using kde4 until I find something better -- at which point, I hope to be done with KDE.

oh, and if you're tempted to say "they should have just held 2.0 until January, then", don't bother: making releases from the code repository is an absolutely requirement to keep open source projects moving

Yes, that's why we call them "release candidates", or "betas", and most importantly, don't break the old one while you're working on the new one.

that's why there is another step in row, e.g. distributions. not that they seem to always be doing their users the best favours lately in that regard. *shrug*

True, plenty of blame to pass around, but this sounds a bit like passing the buck. KDE screwed up, in many spectacular ways. There is currently no consumer-grade version of KDE. But of course, let's blame the distros for not holding back to a sufficiently old version of 3 so as to keep things working until 4 is really ready.

Not that they are blameless -- I place the blame for my current lack of Bluetooth squarely on Kubuntu's shoulders. But when most open source projects make a dot-oh release, it's ready for general consumption. Firefox was.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Brandybuck]

3.5 is still out there and used by millions.

Yeah, and 2.2 is still available on the repos, but so what? The odds that your distro will be supporting 3.5.x in their next release is slim. Many major distros have already dropped support for it.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[caluml]

I enjoy using .NET (because it's Java, minus the brain damages

Seriously, I'm curious - not trolling. What are Java's "brain damages"?

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[FishWithAHammer]

Some things that come to mind:

-Kludgy documentation. Microsoft's documentation is very nice and is logically organized; the Sun JDK docs are a bit of a mess.

-Bad, and I mean bad, GUI frameworks. Compare Swing to Windows.Forms and you'll see what I mean pretty quickly.

-Arbitrary and stupid value/reference type division. There is no good reason to have int and Integer be different things. In .NET, the C# "int" is the same as System.Int32. While there are types that are by default non-nullable (such as Int32), this can be overruled by using the Nullable generic, aka the "?" operator (so a nullable Int32 is written as "Int32? foo").

-Crappy platform-specific programming. Yes, yes, I know, Java is cross-platform--but Mono handles this very nicely; you can put libFoo.so and libFoo.dll in the same directory, import functions from "libFoo", and it will do the Right Thing.

-ActionListeners. I mean...seriously. .NET delegates make the ActionListener paradigm look sad and pathetic.

That said, there are a number of problems with .NET too (the collections API is somewhat retarded), but the only place I use Java these days is when I'm fooling around with GWT.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[AceofSpades19]

OS X is certainly more useful than either, if you can put up with its UI quirks (I personally can't).

And a large part of the usability of Windows comes from having non-crippled software. I use Photoshop, and Krita and the GIMP don't cut it (Krita, I think, has a chance to be awesome; the GIMP, not so much, though I'm hoping the new graphics engine can be used by people who actually know what a decent UI is) and I'm not going to waste time fighting with WINE.

I assumed we were talking about UIs not applications, because thats a completely different story

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[FishWithAHammer]

I intentionally couple the two, because for a while KDE 3.5 was worth the hassle of WINE because it was awfully nice. But if it's end-of-lifed, without the nagging bugs being fixed anymore, there's no reason to stick with it. At least XP still gets bug fixes.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[AceofSpades19]

That's the thing, in Intrepid you can't chose KDE 3.5

I could grab a PPA, or I could grab Hardy. Or I could use Intrepid and KDE4, but fall back to KDE3 for half the packages -- Amarok2 isn't done, so Amarok will be using the KDE3 libs, as will networkmanager (thus breaking kwallet integration)...

it isn't that far behind and it has some added interesting features.

And yet, the fact that it is behind is a big slap in the face. I've told people not to upgrade to KDE4, and I'm about to start telling them to go back to Windows. It's that bad.

You do realize there is more then one desktop environment right? if kde doesn't work for you, you are free to use gnome or xfce

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[wwahammy]

I'm curious as to your opinion on this. Are the problems you find with Desktop environments inherent in them or is it due to incorrect design? Troubleshooting information should never be unavailable but more importantly software should anticipate such problems and/or assist the user in fixing their problem.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

I've used Fluxbox, so yes, I realize that. But until kde4, I could honestly recommend people just pick up Kubuntu. Now, it's back to "Well, there are tradeoffs..."

I'm guessing I would have to at least be using kwin, by now.

Regardless, we shouldn't be having this discussion. KDE should not be that broken.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

Kwin alone is so improved, so much faster, so much more feature-rich, that I'd be using KDE 4 if that were the only improvement.

And yet, I believe Compiz can do everything Kwin can. Why am I using KDE again?

Plasma is a giant leap forward into the future of the desktop metaphor.

Pure marketspeak.

It's light-years beyond anything anyone else is doing,

Unless you count Vista or the OS X Dashboard.

and already more functional than kicker and kdesktop were.

Just a simple example: With KDE 3, I could right-click on the panel, go to "properties", and I would have a nice dropdown to choose the panel size. I also have a nice slider to choose translucency of the background, and I can make it go 100% transparent, while the foreground (widgets and all) are entirely opaque.

Koffice 2, bugs, weird layout and all, is the only place where any innovation is happening in office suites at all, anywhere by anyone.

Can't speak to that, as it's not in Intrepid. If it was recently released, I guess I'll wait for 2.1 -- no, make that 2.2 -- maybe by then it'll be functional, if the rest of the desktop is any indication.

On a more general level, the whole desktop just feels faster than KDE 3 ever was on this hardware.

In some ways, it does feel faster, yes. In other ways, much slower.

One example: Alt+F2. While Katapult was weird, I never had the problem where if I type "kons<enter>" it would open konqueror, because "kon" completed to Konqueror, and it hadn't finished the last search by the time I hit "enter".

That's not just inconvenient, but actually broken -- it's doing the wrong thing because of its slowness, not just the right thing, slower.

Yeah, there's problems. Some fairly glaring ones, still, that frustrate the hell out of me every day. But the pros are totally worth it.

See, that's what's generally referred to as a beta -- it's got some really awesome new features, but it hasn't stablized yet.

And again, it's reminiscent of Vista -- with Microsoft spouting the same hyperbole about how much more advanced it was, with fanboys talking about it being faster, and yet, at the end of the day, it's huge, bloated, buggy, and annoying.

The difference is, at least you have the option of going back to XP, which is supported, and still gets bugfixes. With KDE, you either get bleeding-edge or obsolete.

And for cryin' out loud, somebody's got to take some risks here. Somebody's got to try to move forward even if hurts a little bit.

Moving forward doesn't have to hurt, not even a little bit.

Look, it's not the metaphor-changing that bothers me. It's the shit that doesn't work, it's the shit that isn't obvious when a fucking tooltip -- an almost 15-year-old invention -- would have cleared things up. It's the functionality that's dropped on the floor because it was keeping you from making a release -- as another poster points out, how the fuck does an audio player release a 2.0 which doesn't have a fucking pause button that works?

It's the audacity to call an alpha a dot-oh release, and a beta a dot-one release -- and then trying to blame everyone but yourselves when we expect a sane, smooth upgrade.

Look at other successful projects. Firefox 3 was usable at launch, and Firefox 2 kept getting patches for six months after launch, whereas KDE4 (and associated projects, like Amarok) dropped support before the new version was even released, even in dot-oh status.

At the end of the day, what you're doing is making a very interesting platform for people who like to experiment, which also absolutely sucks for anyone who just wants things to work, who just wants to get things done. The sad thing is, those aren't even mutually exclusive, as Firefox shows.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[LoRdTAW]

I find that I prefer a challenge sometimes. And not using a desktop environment has really challenged me to figure out how to do things without fancy GUI config utilities. I also built up my Ubuntu 8.04 system from a bare bones base install and have had allot of fun (and headaches) learning how a Linux system is put together. With a DE I am presented with a whole system and not much knowledge on how it is actually put together. Like I said I dont dislike DE's I just prefer a simple desktop that does what I need and also forces me to learn the inner workings.

On a side note, I have been fooling with Ubuntu 8.10 and it is very impressive especially with Compiz.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[The Master Control P]

At risk of bringing down the hate of /. upon myself, I'm going to say this: KDE4's problems seem to be symptomatic of "pulling a Vista." By that I mean that they bit off more than they could chew in terms of rewriting and changes in the time they allotted themselves. The release date kept slipping and slipping, features got dropped, and eventually they had to push what they had out the door before people started jumping ship.

KDE4 isn't as much a Vista as Vista, but its launch was definitely flubbed. I remember how ecstatic I was when I first got 4.0 built and installed, and oh it looked /so/ good starting up, but there were just too many unpolished edges and unshined surfaces for me to stay.

Now, I'll admit that I don't have a problem with 4.2 for the most part. Ultimately, I had to just step through every configuration menu and set things right, bluffing along half the way (Oh, another usability fail: at least drop a reminder in kcontrol saying "to configure KDE 4, use..." or make the central configuration app obvious). Browse the web, use konsole, play knetwork, and use my handful of specialty apps - It's mostly harmless. Mostly.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Risen888]

Compiz can do everything Kwin can. Why am I using KDE again?

Kwin is so much faster than Compiz on my hardware it's not even a fair comparison. That's why.

Plasma... marketspeak... Vista/OSX...

Not at all. I'm not talking about clicking the pretty widgets here, I'm talking a desktop system that's totally built on svg graphics, and a system that removes the artificial barriers between application, desktop, panel, etc. In Plasma it's all of a piece. The eye candy's nice, but it's not the point.

as another poster points out, how the fuck does an audio player release a 2.0 which doesn't have a fucking pause button that works?

Hey man, no arguments from me. But in the interest of fairness, Amarok is a completely different team and development cycle. Amarok is not KDE.

It's the audacity to call an alpha a dot-oh release, and a beta a dot-one release -- and then trying to blame everyone but yourselves when we expect a sane, smooth upgrade.

Not true at all. The KDE team told you what to expect. We all walked into this with eyes wide open. "If you want stability you want 3.5. If you want the Next Big Thing you want 4." To my knowledge the KDE folks didn't tell anyone to stop packaging KDE3 for their distributions. Maybe you should bring this up with the people that did that.

Firefox 3 was usable at launch, and Firefox 2 kept getting patches for six months after launch

This is an absurd comparison. It's like comparing a hammer to a truck. Firefox 3 is a web browser (and built on the same code as the earlier version to boot). KDE4 is... not.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

Kwin is so much faster than Compiz on my hardware it's not even a fair comparison.

What hardware would that be?

I can't tell the difference between kwin, on my newer, faster hardware, and Beryl (old, old fork of Compiz), on my old, slower hardware. Except for the fact that beryl was less glitchy than kwin at release. At least now it's stable enough, most of the time, but I still get random artifacts when I have desktop effects turned on.

I'm talking a desktop system that's totally built on svg graphics

$ find /usr/share/kde4 -name '*.png' | wc -l
692

*cough* Bullshit.

a system that removes the artificial barriers between application, desktop, panel, etc.

Oh, you mean like WindowMaker? Wow...

Let's see -- The desktop and the panel are still different, although the same widgets can now go in both places. And they do have to be widgets -- applications won't do.

The desktop background is not drawn by a widget. Nor are applications themselves widgets -- nor do they behave like one. A widget can be arbitrarily rotated and resized, and does not do the wobbly window effect.

Oh, and this is pretty much the OS X Dashboard, or Vista's widgets. The only difference is, you used them to build a panel, too -- which is cool. Don't get me wrong -- it's a much cleaner concept, and I'm sure it's cleaner code. It appeals to me as a user.

But at the end of the day, what does it matter? It's not revolutionary. It's not a paradigm shift. It's barely more than a toy. Let's not pretend you just invented the mouse or something.

in the interest of fairness, Amarok is a completely different team and development cycle.

True. But it seems they've both pretty much failed in the same ways -- a dot-oh release as the Next Big Thing, while leaving the stable version to completely rot. On top of which, since the NBT isn't done, and the stable version isn't being worked on, several features are completely broken or absent from both.

The KDE team told you what to expect. We all walked into this with eyes wide open. "If you want stability you want 3.5. If you want the Next Big Thing you want 4."

And they did so by perverting the meaning of version numbers in the same way Microsoft has for decades.

Dot-oh releases mean stability. If you want to tell the rest of the world that it's not ready for consumption yet, you call it alpha, or beta, or you say "Development Release".

When asked, the response I most often get is, you called it dot-oh so that people would start taking it seriously, and start using it. In other words, you released it the way you did specifically to have people try it, by causing the same kind of confusion you now complain about when people try 4.1 and expect a working system.

Firefox 3 is a web browser (and built on the same code as the earlier version to boot). KDE4 is... not.

Granted. But Firefox 3 was over two years in the making, and they still managed to pull off a solid release. KDE4 was in development at least that long, probably longer, and managed to pull off a beta release, which was called 4.0.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[Risen888]

What hardware would that be?

Okay, but don't laugh. It's a Pentium D processor, Intel onboard graphics, and I just recently upgraded from 1 to 2 gig of RAM. Compiz barely runs (haven't tried since the memory upgrade, to be fair). Kwin absolutely flies. I realize this is a battle of anecdotes and proves nothing, but it's my experience, fwiw. Also, I have never gotten artifacts with Kwin. I don't think I've ever seen it crash on me either (Plasma is another story altogether...)

The desktop and the panel are still different, although the same widgets can now go in both places.

No they're not. Plasma is built on the idea of "containments." Widgets, the desktop, and the panel are all containments. They can contain data and/or they can contain other containments. I wish I could find the link to Seigo's blog that explains this better...

And they do have to be widgets -- applications won't do.

This guy made a "window-swallowing" widget within about four months of the dot-oh release. Also, see the "web browser" plasmoid which is really just a stripped-down version of Konqueror. Granted, that "window-swallowing" link is more of a concept piece than a working idea, but yeah, it can totally be done.

The desktop background is not drawn by a widget.

No, the desktop is a containment. See above. Which is one of the cool things about this. There's no more "coding for a desktop widget" or "coding for a panel applet" or "coding for X or Y." You're just coding for Plasma. And as an added bonus, you can write for Plasma in whatever language you like. This is the same thing that allows Plasma to use Google Widgets, Screenlets, etc.

Really, I am far more interested in the technical improvements and concepts of Plasma than I am the eye candy factor. Not that that isn't cool, but as you say, it's been done. But this stuff hasn't been done before. No, it's not a paradigm shift in terms of user interface, but it most certainly is a pretty major shift in how you code for the desktop.

(This is the part where I skip over Amarok, because really it's not related to the topic, and I certainly don't like Amarok all that much either.)

And they did so by perverting the meaning of version numbers in the same way Microsoft has for decades.

Way to drag out Microsoft as a strawman there. Whether you like their version numbering or not, they told you what was coming. Some people did not listen, and that's their own damn fault. Some distribution packagers did not listen, and that's a damn shame, but there it is.

Granted. But Firefox 3 was over two years in the making, and they still managed to pull off a solid release.

Okay, but again, "making" means something totally different in the context of a single application (especially something like a web browser, which is a pretty well mapped-out space already), and it certainly means something different when your "making" means adapting and updating an existing code base. There may be other examples you could use in this spot, but Firefox isn't one.

Re:Listen to yourselves!

[SanityInAnarchy]

There's no more "coding for a desktop widget" or "coding for a panel applet" or "coding for X or Y." You're just coding for Plasma.

I must be missing something. How is this different than, say, coding for X11? Drawing an X window of a specific type? Or building a widget in whatever toolkit you're using?

Whether you like their version numbering or not, they told you what was coming.

I think we're at an impasse, there. They did not tell us what was coming in the universal language of version numbers -- as in, call a beta a beta.

And, when I've asked about it, the reason they chose to call it 4.0 is so that people would start using it. It seems to me that people would start using it because they assumed it would be a milestone, and an actual, stable release.

That seems pretty deceptive to me -- basically, you released it in order to get more beta testers.

And the experience was pretty much like "upgrading" to Vista -- which I don't think is a strawman, considering that the Vista upgrade is actually smoother.

There may be other examples you could use in this spot, but Firefox isn't one.

I'm not using Firefox as an example of code. Maybe you did have a much more difficult problem -- I'll grant that.

I'm using Firefox as an example of a well managed release cycle.

Or, put another way: Kubuntu 8.10 was a pretty horrible release, and they have to put together far more packages than KDE does. And I give them no excuse for doing things like dropping Bluetooth support.

In both cases, the release should've been delayed, and the issues should've been ironed out.

Hmm, what else... Oh yeah, the Linux kernel. 2.6.0 actually did work. The development branch was called 2.5.x, and people actually used that to get ready for 2.6. And maybe I'm not remembering very well, but I remember upgrading to 2.6 and finding pretty much everything just worked.

phoronix

[buchner.johannes]

Check out this list:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=great_linux_innovations_2008&num=1

Re:phoronix

[ianare]

Thank you. This is the article they should've posted.

not a fan of ff3

[buddyglass]

Faster = good. Regressions from FF2 = bad. Awesome bar = not so awesome.

Re:not a fan of ff3

[El_Oscuro]

I know I am in the minority here, but I actually kind of *LIKE* the Awesome bar. I type the first few characters of the website I want and usually it appears on the list. I also use things like tab file expansion in BASH, so it is an interface I am very comfortable with. I do agree that you should be able to turn it off.

Re:not a fan of ff3

[Symbolis]

You're not alone. I really dig the "awesome bar", too. No idea why it gets so much hate. Apart from it being something new, I mean.

Re:not a fan of ff3

[Anonymous Coward]

You're on the wrong site. I think you either meant to be on digg.com or assmustard.net.

Re:not a fan of ff3

[Anonymous Coward]

I type the first few characters of the website I want and usually it appears on the list.

When I did that, the site I wanted was always like 10 down in the list. After installing oldbar, when I start to type a URL, the URL I want is _always_ first in the list.

Re:not a fan of ff3

[compro01]

The awesome bar is a learning thing. you need to use it for awhile before your sites float to the top of the list.

Also, there's a couple tweaks in about:config that make it nicer. Set browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to true and browser.urlbar.matchBehavior to 2 (respect word boundaries) or 3 (search only beginning of urls and titles).

Re:not a fan of ff3

[DoktorSeven]

Doesn't seem to help. Still brings up things in the middle of freaking titles and URLs as a first match.

If I wanted to search my history, I'd bring up History and use the search feature. I want to complete URLs as typed when I type in the damn URL bar.

Awesomebar is garbage, and whoever thought it up should be ashamed of themselves.

Wine?

[morgan_greywolf]

Okay, mod me flamebait if you want, but I fail to see how Wine is any sort of win for the open source community. Wine is a pretty good open source implementation of an ugly, broken and virtually unimplementable API that really shows its age and irrelevance in an increasingly Internet-driven world.

As another poster says, Django is a win. Pyjamas is a win. Even KDE 4 is more of a win. But Wine? No, Wine is nothing more than a legacy layer in a world that increasingly doesn't need such.

Re:Wine?

[deraj123]

Okay, mod me flamebait if you want, but I fail to see how Wine is any sort of win for the open source community. Wine is a pretty good open source implementation of an ugly, broken and virtually unimplementable API that really shows its age and irrelevance in an increasingly Internet-driven world.

No, you're not flamebait. The more applications that can work in Wine, the more options I have for migrating away from Windows. This year for the first time, I was able to get rid of my Windows box. Everything that I was keeping it for I can now run under Wine. I would say that Wine is a legacy layer that is continuously improving in a world that still needs it.

Re:Wine?

[trollebolle]

There's a flipside to that coin. The more programs that work perfectly in Wine, the more vendors may feel inclined to not support their app with a native Linux client (or worse, discontinue their Linux client) because "it works fine with Wine".

Re:Wine?

[ion.simon.c]

*points to Picassa* :(

Re:Wine?

[drinkypoo]

As another poster says, Django is a win. Pyjamas is a win. Even KDE 4 is more of a win. But Wine? No, Wine is nothing more than a legacy layer in a world that increasingly doesn't need such.

You're not flaming, you're just wrong. Wine enables many people to leave Windows even though they rely on just one program.

It also supports an entire class of gamer which refuses to dual-boot :)

Linux can run Windows programs, but not vice versa. (coLinux et al don't count.) This can only be a benefit.

Unfortunately, I had to go back to Windows because Linux never really properly supported my hardware. I even paid $20 for the conexant hsfmodem driver, which didn't work. nVidia can read my display's characteristics on Windows but not Linux because they haven't bothered to add EDID 2 support to the Linux driver, and the Linux Quadro support is ++crashy anyway. But let's face it, the wine devs wouldn't be working on making Linux more stable anyway.

Wine is a hugely used and useful project. But I won't put them on MY list of open source wins until we have both MAPI and TAPI working properly. Especially TAPI, without which you practically can't do anything with a modem or similar device (like run Motorola Mobile Phone Tools.)

Open-source database

[this great guy]

In 1995, Ulf Michael Widenius and David Axmark started writing an open-source database for their own needs. In 2008 Sun buys MySQL for $1B. Isn't that one of the greatest open-source achievement ?

Re:Open-source database

[FishWithAHammer]

If MySQL didn't suck, yes, it would be.

MySQL is a very fast database because it takes out the parts of a database that make it a database. Data validation? Pfft! Who needs that?!

Re:Open-source database

[drinkypoo]

In 1995, Ulf Michael Widenius and David Axmark started writing an open-source database for their own needs. In 2008 Sun buys MySQL for $1B. Isn't that one of the greatest open-source achievement ?

Sure, if you measure success monetarily. I think the success story of MySQL is that everyone uses it even though it sucks.

Re:Open-source database

[Kjella]

Sure, if you measure success monetarily. I think the success story of MySQL is that everyone uses it even though it sucks.

The fact that people use it long enough to bitch about it, and keep using it even though they keep bitching is the best sign it's not that bad. The really crappy software dies silently.

What about open source development platforms

[postmortem]

NetBeans and Eclipse namely.

They cover C, C++, Java, Python, Perl, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, UML, XML, SVN, and many more - totally free. The compilers and interpreters for listed languages exist freely on Windows, and all are open source.

The best part is - these platforms are as good, and often better than paid versions such as Visual Studio.

They are also very popular in enterprise...

Re:What about open source development platforms

[FishWithAHammer]

Sorry, but if you're saying that Eclipse beats out Visual Studio, I'm going to guess that you don't use Visual Studio. NetBeans is slightly better, but wasn't worth the time when I evaluated it. Just a few things off the top of my head about Eclipse, which I've spent way too much time fighting:

-IntelliSense is generally less responsive, less cognizant of recent changes, and with Compiz on under Linux actually causes slowdown (wtf?)
-The workspace paradigm is clumsy for small projects, but doesn't scale to big ones (the VS Solution Explorer doesn't really scale either, but at least it's got better categorization)
-Honking ugly widgetry that doesn't really fit any DE, Windows or Linux
-Crap JSP support (yeah, VS doesn't support JSP at all--but it's got excellent support for the ASP.NET equivalent)
-Annoying extension framework, making extensibility a pain in the ass (people like Zend extend Eclipse because it's free to do so more than because it's a good platform for it)

About the only thing I can really say about Eclipse that's markedly positive is that the code refactoring is great--if you use it. (I don't.)

Re:What about open source development platforms

[pdusen]

I haven't found Eclipse to be quite as good as Visual Studio in any respect, personally. At least it's free.

Re:What about open source development platforms

[postmortem]

I absolutely agree that there are things where VS are better, but even you have stated some advantages of Eclipse.

Evaluating which is better is a very difficult task. Even if one would try to make an objective analysis of each, not many would agree with such findings. Eclipse and Visual Studio are covering two different platforms and they don't have much common ground. Eclipse doesn't support .NET; and VS doesn't support Java. VS doesn't support makefiles, but you might not need them. Even code editors have different features; for example I haven't seen 'Call Hierarchy' feature in VS.

Generally, NetBeans is more polished than Eclipse, it needs less configuring, but is still underdog compared to Eclipse.

My conclusion is that you can work decently with all things they support. And they do support a lot of things.

Re:What about open source development platforms

[FishWithAHammer]

I disagree on the "work decently" part, especially when it comes to non-Java languages. PHP is OK (either with Zend or another one that I kind of liked, but the name of the latter escapes me right now). But C++? Either KDevelop on Linux or VS on Windows blow it out of the water.

And VS2005 does support Java (sort of) with J#, although not excellently anymore. I know I've seen Java toolkits for VS2005/2008, too, though maybe not with integrated Java debugger engines (I didn't look closely enough).

Re:What about open source development platforms

[harry666t]

I've tried VS 2005 Express on one of the computers at my uni, and I use Eclipse at work, and I'd have to say, both of them suck horribly, and the thing they suck the most at, is the seemingly simple task of aiding me in efficiently editing^W^W^W^W^W not getting in my way while editing source code.

So far nothing beats Emacs (for me).

Re:What about open source development platforms

[themusicgod1]

Can you step backwards in VisualStudio.NET? I find that to be the best invention since emacs in programming space.

I seem to remember developing in VS in 2005 and I didn't see that feature. Maybe eclipse has beaten VisualStudio.NET circa 2005---and is closing that gap?

Debian GUI installation

[millosh]

While it was a small step for free software, it was a great one for Debian... And a big surprise for anyone who started Debian installation during this year.

This is a big victory for further psychological development of free software. Making a victory in the fight against yourself is more important than making a victory against someone else.

pseudo-victories?

[Eil]

Two of the best open source projects that I first learned about and utilized for "real work" in 2008 (though I don't know that they count as "victories"):

Puppet, the system administration automation system. (Like cfengine, but way smarter and easier)

CodeIgniter, the PHP web application framework that doesn't box you into its idea of a web framework

Cheese with your Whine?

[mcrbids]

... And along with your increased ability and incentive to move away from 'doze, comes increased incentive for developers to NOT move away from WinXX API.

If Wine works well, why should I, (a developer) want to port my appz to *nix? (not that I haven't, and we've offered OSX support for some time, but in all these years I've NEVER been asked about a Linux port) Of course, I won't officially support Wine on XYZ Linux, so the end result is a perpetual second-rate support for Linux.

On top of this, there's no particular incentive for us to support Linux anyway, since it's such an incohesive environment. Support RPM? Apt? Tar? Compiled sources? CUPs? PDF through Adobe? Ghost? Kghost? KDE? Gnome?

Each of these is important, because end users often have trouble finding the power switch. In this environment, having 24,000 flavors of the same O/S is *NOT* a good thing. And I say this despite using Linux for ALL of our core infrastructure and tech workstations!

Is this what you wanted? 'Cause it's what you are getting...

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[Drinking Bleach]

... And along with your increased ability and incentive to move away from 'doze, comes increased incentive for developers to NOT move away from WinXX API.

If Wine works well, why should I, (a developer) want to port my appz to *nix? (not that I haven't, and we've offered OSX support for some time, but in all these years I've NEVER been asked about a Linux port) Of course, I won't officially support Wine on XYZ Linux, so the end result is a perpetual second-rate support for Linux.

Bit of a chicken-and-egg problem for sure, but I would not consider Wine to be causing any problems in the long term. Eventually you'll find some reason to port to Linux natively; for example, so that your end-users can save files with a native directory path scheme rather than remembering that what the application calls "C:\" really means "~/.wine/drive_c" (only one small example, yes, but you should be able to infer other reasons too).

On top of this, there's no particular incentive for us to support Linux anyway, since it's such an incohesive environment. Support RPM? Apt? Tar? Compiled sources? CUPs? PDF through Adobe? Ghost? Kghost? KDE? Gnome?

Each of these is important, because end users often have trouble finding the power switch. In this environment, having 24,000 flavors of the same O/S is *NOT* a good thing. And I say this despite using Linux for ALL of our core infrastructure and tech workstations!

Is this what you wanted? 'Cause it's what you are getting...

... and now you're just repeating typical MS-shill FUD that's barely rooted in issues of the 1990s.

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[dvice_null]

> If Wine works well, why should I, (a developer) want to port my appz to *nix?

You should write them portable from the beginning. Use cross platform libraries, Qt (desktop applications/Games), wxWidgets (Desktop applications, license suits closed source apps also), SDL (2D games, very portable, but not very OOP), Irrlicht (3D games, easy to use) etc.

There libraries, e.g. wxWidgets, Qt and Irrlicht are easier to use than MFC and DirectX, so there is really no reason to write closed source applications. It is more expensive and it is not portable.

> but in all these years I've NEVER been asked about a Linux port

I quite rarely ask, especially if I see that the app has been written in MFC or Visual Basic, because I just know that they will never port it. That doesn't mean that I would not need Linux port. Instead I might write my own solution, release it as open source and become a competitor to you, with version that is portable and free.

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[ianare]

It depends on the situation. In some organizations there might be a desire to move to linux/OpenOffice for a variety of economic, practical, or philosophical reasons.

Consider a school computer lab or a small office receptionist's station, for example. The basic functions of both could easily be met by a default Ubuntu install - email, web, chat, MS office documents, printing, etc. But the school may have special educational software, and the receptionist a custom scheduling app, both written long ago, unmaintained, and windows only.

A few or even a single app can completely block a migration away from Windows. If the app(s) work well enough under WINE, then that problem is avoided.

As far as creating any new applications, the trend seems to be either cloud computing where the OS is irrelevant, or with cross platform libraries/frameworks. There is more of a real danger now of losing marketshare by not supporting multiple platforms, and I see this as becoming more important in the next few years.

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[mcrbids]

Our stuff IS written to be cross-platform. We already support OSX. We can support Linux but why? The point is that there's no point in porting it, because the cost of supporting it would be too high, even if there was demand, which there isn't.

Instead I might write my own solution, release it as open source and become a competitor to you, with version that is portable and free.

And, that works for you in one of two scenarios:

A) The software has a broad need for applicability, EG: an O/S kernel or a word processor.

B) The software is very simple.

OSS pretty much fails at niche software - software with a small user base and a high cost of entry. Niche software can be very extensive, as business rules and requirements get written into the code. And ultimately, the cost of maintaining all these requirements has to come from *somewhere*. So it's either done in-house (in which case open-sourcing the software effectively destroys your company's investment) or by a small software house (such as mine) which reduces the cost of managing the software by distributing the cost across multiple clients.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big OSS advocate, I use OSS wherever I can, and have standardized on RedHat Linux for all of our infrastructure! We've extensively reviewed the idea of open sourcing our product, as well. But our product is a niche product, and there's really no point in releasing our wares to the world like that.

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[Risen888]

Is this what you wanted?

Hell yes.

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[Blakey Rat]

QT doesn't make Windows apps. It makes weird mutant apps that:

1) Don't have Windows standard dialogs
2) Don't work with tons of Windows features (I stopped using Pidgin because, being a QT app, it can't work with text recognition or voice control, and had no integration with Windows' tablet features.)
3) Requires a completely un-related program to be installed

And it's even worse on OS X.

If you want *real* cross-platform apps, don't use QT. That's the short version.

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[Ant P.]

Support RPM? Apt? Tar? Compiled sources?

What business do you have in knowing what format the distributions package your programs as?

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[deraj123]

Our stuff IS written to be cross-platform. We already support OSX. We can support Linux but why? The point is that there's no point in porting it, because the cost of supporting it would be too high, even if there was demand, which there isn't.

So...with or without Wine, I won't have linux support. However, with Wine, I actually stand a chance at getting a niche application to work in Linux, allowing me not to have to purchase and maintain an entire operating system solely to run one piece of niche software. It seems you're making it pretty obvious why Wine is valuable.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big OSS advocate, I use OSS wherever I can, and have standardized on RedHat Linux for all of our infrastructure!

Me too. The "wherever I can" being the important part. With your niche application, OSS is not an option. However, without Wine, if I want to run your application, an OSS OS isn't even an option. With Wine, suddenly my "wherever I can" scope has grown larger.

We've extensively reviewed the idea of open sourcing our product, as well. But our product is a niche product, and there's really no point in releasing our wares to the world like that.

Quite understandable. If it's not worth the cost, I wouldn't expect you to do so. However, with Wine, your application becomes available to me (the guy without Windows or OSX) - which if I'm interested in your app is pretty important for me.

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[Nick Ives]

... And along with your increased ability and incentive to move away from 'doze, comes increased incentive for developers to NOT move away from WinXX API.

But the better Wine is, the more people will use linux on a desktop. Presumably that means there will eventually be a tipping point at which there is a mass of installed Linux desktops it's worth writing native code for and Win32 will only be around as old skool compatibility.

Of course, that ignores the other massive problems facing shipping binaries on Linux. Most proprietary applications either ship statically linked or with all their libraries bundled in because you can never be sure what flavour of the month distro any particular Linux user will have installed. In that situation shipping a version of Wine that's tested against your application is no extra bother for the end user and is probably the best solution all round.

Re:Cheese with your Whine?

[cyclop]

Could you at least check Wine compatibility? See, if your app is completely Wine-compatible, it's almost like it's ported. IIRC, Picasa on Linux works in this way.

How about OpenChange?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me like a lot of people are discounting what the small team of mostly European developers are doing with their efforts to provide a portable Open Source implementation the Microsoft Exchange system and it's underlying protocols.

While I think it might be a long ways off for them to have a completely working comparable implementation of Microsoft Exchange, in the near-term it will mean that from the client-side, there will be alternative choices to using Microsoft Outlook while still gaining access to all of the messaging and groupware capabilities offered by the traditional Exchange infrastructure.

Strange Ordering.

[drolli]

In my opinion, the biggest victory is the availability of notebooks from larger manufacturers with linux preinstalled, for a low price (netbooks).

Hello...

[red30]

Um, Vista.

Victories and ...

[El Lobo]

It's fine and dandy to talk about "victories", but the whole picture is not the same if you don't talk about what does go wrong. You never hear about the hundred of applications that die a painful slow dead on SourceForge (the place where software is placed to die). You never hear about the wonderful TurboPower components that died after they went Open Source. You won't hear about Cobian Backup which was pulled back from OS because it was dying that same slow painful dead, and it's now going strong again when the author took the command back. You see, Open Source is not a magic word. It's not a magic solution. Sure there are some victories , but as well as with commercial software, for every "victory" there are thousand of deaths. So this article says actually nothing.

Re:Victories and ...

[Zontar The Mindless]

Are you really that complete a killjoy, or do you just play one on /.?

As if there aren't thousands of closed-source apps that die, and once dead, cannot be resurrected. Ever.

Re:Victories and ...

[Bert64]

Plenty of projects die, and their source sits on sourceforge untouched for years... But that source is there for anyone to see and use in the future if they so desire...
Plenty of proprietary apps die too, after which they're no use to anyone and only the original vendor can make use of the code.

There are also quite a lot of projects which haven't seen development for years because they do everything they're supposed to. How many applications have you used which reached a peak at some point, and all subsequent versions have been slower, more bloated and more annoying? Lots of people swear by win2k or xp and hate vista.... With open source, older functional versions can still be used instead of being forced to use the latest version against your will.

Re:Victories and ...

[squiggleslash]

I also notice nobody seems to be concerned any more about Feline Aids.

It's the number one killer of domestic cats.

Mwaah mwaaaaaaaaaah.

Python 3 == KDE 4

[mangu]

Sadly, the FOSS community seems to have forgotten a simple fact everybody knows: If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

All I've seen on Python 3 seems like a step backwards for me. Kill the % format operator? WTF? Do you have an idea of how often one uses that operator? Multiply that by the time to write and/or read the new syntax vs. the old.

It was the =~ operator that kept me from switching from Perl to Python for some time, now they want to kill one feature that makes Python syntax so much better than all other languages. Sad, very sad.

I have this suggestion to people who want to improve anything: *add* as many new features you want, but keep the old ones intact. Then, very carefully, remove the old features that nobody uses anymore. Sure, this will lead to some bloat, but that's much better than making it unusable.

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[Chapter80]

Kill the % format operator? WTF?

There's the distinct possibility that I don't know what I am talking about, but one quick Google search tells me that % format wasn't killed, just replaced with something better.

From the link:

Many Python programmers felt that the built-in % operator for formatting strings was too constrained, because:

• It is a binary operator and can take at most two arguments.
• Exempting the format string argument, all other arguments must be squeezed in with either a tuple or a dictionary.

This style is somewhat inflexible, so Python 3 introduces a new way of doing string formatting. (Both the % operator and the string.Template module are retained in version 3.)

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[CarpetShark]

Madness. Python 3 is excellent, with improvements all around. Even the unicode changes alone are enough to make me want to switch. I just wish distros and other packages had kept up with the alphas, so I could move as soon as 3 came out.

Actually, that's one (the only) area where I agree on your KDE4 comparison: KDE4 failed to keep its python APIs up to date with its C++ platform. As a result, the KDE3 apps I'd written couldn't be ported in time for KDE4. Perhaps if they'd supported their developers (if not their users), they'd have a decent platform now. As it stands, I've switched back to GNOME after many years away. Horrible release management all around for KDE4 I'm afraid. They really need to drop that whole "x.3 is the REAL release" B.S.

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[mangu]

one quick Google search tells me that % format wasn't killed, just replaced with something better

That's true, if you define "better" as worse. Let's compare the examples from the link you posted:

Python 2:

>>> "I love %s, %s, and %s" % ("eggs", "bacon", "sausage")
'I love eggs, bacon, and sausage'

Python 3:

>>>"I love {0}, {1}, and {2}".format("eggs", "bacon", "sausage")
'I love eggs, bacon, and sausage'

How, exactly, is this an improvement?
Besides being simpler, the old version had an advantage that's never mentioned by Python 3 apologists: it's closer to the C language format. One can copy directly the format strings, making it easier to migrate code from C to Python, something that one does a lot of time.

Python 2:

>>> print "%7.3g" % 10.0
          10

Python 3:

>>>print(format(10.0, "7.3g"))
              10

Count the needed keystrokes for each version. Sure, for someone who doesn't know that % means format, the new version is easier to understand, but you need to learn it only once. After you learn this operator, you need not be burdened by typing "format( ... )" each time a simple % will do.

Sadly, the Python community seems to having been taken over by a bunch of CS theoreticians. They plan to drop the % format operator in Python 3.1 because it requires tuples or dictionaries? So what? WHY do tuples and dictionaries exist in Python, anyhow, if they cannot be used?

Python's value resides in its phenomenal ease of use, which makes code easier and faster to write and understand. Each and every one of the changes in Python 3 makes code longer to write. Go through the changes carefully, I did, and couldn't find a single change that would take less keystrokes to write the code in typical applications, except for some string-related stuff.

The only step forward I see in Python 3 is Unicode. Unicode is broken in Python 2, but less so in Python 3. It's broken in every other language I know, Unicode is broken, period. At least they are trying to make it work in Python 3, I must admit. But still it's too little to justify all the other steps backwards. I really can't understand how some very intelligent people could argue that

>>>fid = open("log.txt", "a")
>>>print("log.txt", file=fid)

is in any way "simpler" or "cleaner syntax" then

>>>fid = open("log.txt", "a")
>>>print>>fid, "log text"

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[ozamosi]

It is, and has been for a long time, the Python Way to use English instead of cryptic characters. It is, for instance, perfectly possible to replace all != with is not. And that's not even mentioning the significant whitespace, which means you'll have to add at least one (but, if you follow the Python guidelines, four) characters for each line you want to be part of the subblock, instead of just a character to start the block and one more to close it.

If you don't want to write any more characters than you have to, go back to Perl - that's really what it shines at.

I know the above paragraph makes me sound like a dick, but the fact that we have all these languages around, all having completely different design philosophies, is a Good Thing, which not only lets us pick our favorite language among all those available, but also works as a sort of evolution, where language developers steals the good ideas from the competitors, and all of them end up kicking ass.

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[Chapter80]

ok, maybe I should re-word my comment. It wasn't Killed, it was supplemented with an alternative.

Did you see this part: "(Both the % operator and the string.Template module are retained in version 3.)"

My intended point was that the old way still works, which is contrary to your original post. I thought you were advocating that, rather than removing a key function, they should (your words...) "*add* as many new features you want, but keep the old ones intact." which appears to be what they did.

Is that clearer? I am not trying to advocate that one is better than the other. I am trying to say that they did precisely what you wanted them to do!

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[mangu]

Both the % operator and the string.Template module are retained in version 3.

According to the plan "it will be deprecated in Python 3.1 and removed from the language at some later time"

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[mangu]

It is, and has been for a long time, the Python Way to use English instead of cryptic characters

Up to a point, depending on how you define "cryptic". It would be perfectly possible to replace "a & b" with "a binary_and b", but would it be wise? The distinction between binary and logical operators that in the C language is done by the simple & vs. double && has been done in Python by using the English word "and" for the logical operation, while keeping the "&" character for the binary operation. From my experience in training people, this distinction between the logical and binary operations is a much bigger source of confusion than the string formatting operations.

The "%" operator is a perfect example of the point where a basic general principle can be turned into zealotry. For a beginner, it could take, perhaps, a few minutes to learn that "%" means "format". But from now on, for the rest of his life as a programmer he has to struggle with typing a six-character word instead of a single character.

No one is advocating to replace "3 + 4" with "three plus four", so this Python Way to use English does have its limits. Oh, wait, let's not give them ideas for Python 4... I can see it now, operators are dirty, since everything-is-an-object. Let's have "plus", "minus", "divide", and "multiply" methods for number objects instead, that way the syntax is cleaner and we avoid those unholy binary operators.

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[ozamosi]

If we're only talking about the string formating, it's my opinion that the new way makes sense: I, personally, think of what the % operator does not as an operator that takes two arguments, but as a string that has "stuff" done with it - doing "stuff" to the string by calling one of it's methods makes sense. The new formating strings looses C compatibility, but on the other hand gains C# compatibility, so it's not like they invented a brand new syntax themselves.

It also frees the programmer from having to remember a cryptic one-letter name for the type of an object, when the exact object type is pretty much irrelevant in other places of the language. The MySQLdb module, and it's ideas about how to escape parameters in a safe way, is an excellent example on why C-style string formating is a bad idea.

There is also some new, fancy stuff that can be done with the new operator, that should increase code's readability: the example given in the relevant PEP (which doesn't work yet) of typing "Today is: {0:a b d H:M:S Y}".format(datetime.now()), for instance, looks pretty nifty.

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[greyc]

It is, for instance, perfectly possible to replace all != with is not.

That's completely wrong. is not tests for identity, != tests for equality. For instance:
>>> True != 1
False
>>> True is not 1
True

Personally, I also think 'is not' is a horrible name for a python operator. Without this operator, the expression 'X is not Y' would still be valid Python, with a meaning equivalent to 'X is (not Y)' - which has a different meaning from 'X is not Y' in Python. Therefore, 'is not' could well be confusing to people who don't know it, but do know the other python operators. IMO, 'isnot' would have been a much better choice.

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[harry666t]

> The only step forward I see in Python 3 is Unicode.

You mean broken os.listdir(), sys.argv(), and stuff? I hadn't tried Py3k myself, but all the Python blogs everywhere are bitching about how Python is trying to pretend that Unix plays well with Unicode. I have lots of funny characters in directory names in my music collection, and I often write small scripts to organize that stuff, and I certainly feel like everything's going to break with Py3k.

As of "print >> stream, string" vs "print(string, file=stream)", how about "stream.write(string)"? Always seemed like the most obvious way to do that.

The % operator... How about forming a committee to convince the BDFL to keep it? I only recently started to prefer it over + and string concatenation, and I think I'm going to like it more than string.format().

By the way, string.format() seems to have an advantage when translating strings to another language, when sometimes the order of the substituted words has to be changed. But it still holds true that dropping % is pita.

Re:Python 3 == KDE 4

[Chapter80]

OK, so it again sounds like Guido is doing what you want. He kept it in there, and is "Then, very carefully, remov[ing] the old features that nobody uses anymore." for significantly large values of "nobody".

By deprecating it, he still leaves the functionality in the language, encouraging people to quit using it. By the time it's removed, I doubt that very many people will be using it.

Personally, I think this issue was handled perfectly. It might be removed in 3.6 or 4.0 or something, when enough people have adapted to the new method. If it's removed in 3.1, I'll agree with you, but it doesn't look like it will be.

And if you, or others, don't like it, you can fork the project, or simply write a function that emulates the current functionality (or stay on an older version).

Probably makes sense to agree to disagree though. I think Python 3.0 was handled as perfectly as can be expected, and I have never seen such attention to detail, perfection, and community in any other language.

-Guido's cousin

jumping ship in python and kde4

[CarpetShark]

Thanks for this summary, it made interesting reading. I can see you approached this in a moderate, thoughtful, and reasonable manner.

However, I think you missed an important aspect of your own "jump ship of their own accord" argument: the fact that people using more recent third-party 2.6+ python modules will also have to start considering whether django itself is keeping up with their needs. For me, this is the main concern. I've been waiting on decent unicode support, amongst other things, in python for years. Now that it's finally here and stable, I really hate the idea of having to keep coding to the older apis for the sake of django etc. If my projects can target 2.6/3.x, and django is the only thing holding it back from that, then I'm quite likely to abandon django for those projects. It'd be a shame, as django *is* the nicest web platform I've found for most things, and it has at least made the transition to __unicode__(). Still, when it comes to developing new code, it makes little sense to target platforms that are already behind the times.

Ideally, I would have liked to see django have a branch targetting 3.x as soon as there was a 2.6/3.x alpha available, with the port being merged and released in sync with the 3.x release. That's how it should be done, assuming enough manpower. Failing that, I think it's advisable to port ASAP. Waiting years is pretty bad. In fact, it's the kind of bad release syncing that made me give up on KDE 4 as a dev platform too: they simply didn't release python APIs in time for developers to target the platform. As a result, KDE4 hasn't been targetted much.
 

Re:jumping ship in python and kde4

[ubernostrum]

However, I think you missed an important aspect of your own "jump ship of their own accord" argument: the fact that people using more recent third-party 2.6+ python modules will also have to start considering whether django itself is keeping up with their needs.

Django runs on Python 2.6 (as well as Python 2.5, Python 2.4 and Python 2.3, and equivalent non-C implementations like Jython and IronPython). It will run on Python 2.7 when that lands. So if you've got a library that currently only works on 2.6, you can use it with Django right now.

For me, this is the main concern. I've been waiting on decent unicode support, amongst other things, in python for years. Now that it's finally here and stable, I really hate the idea of having to keep coding to the older apis for the sake of django etc. If my projects can target 2.6/3.x, and django is the only thing holding it back from that, then I'm quite likely to abandon django for those projects. It'd be a shame, as django *is* the nicest web platform I've found for most things, and it has at least made the transition to __unicode__(). Still, when it comes to developing new code, it makes little sense to target platforms that are already behind the times.

Honestly, I think you're underestimating a couple of things:

1. The sheer size of the ecosystem of stuff that has to migrate before Python 3.0 will be useful to you.
2. The number of people who would be even more miffed than you if projects like Django just suddenly dropped everything lower than 2.6 and made a mad rush to get on 3.0 as quickly as they can port the code.

The simple fact is that most projects which are large/mature enough to be "nice" to use just aren't going to be running on 3.0 any time soon (IIRC, Plone -- to take a different example -- is talking about a four- or five-year migration timeline). Even if every library needed by every one of those projects magically ran perfectly on 3.0 tomorrow, the fact remains that any sizable project has a significant obligation to its existing users, the majority of whom are not stamping their feet and loudly demanding "Python 3.0 RIGHT NOW". And that means you can't drop support for, say, Python 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 next month, unless you'd like to lose most of your user base; too many people still depend on things working with those versions of Python and can't upgrade that quickly no matter how impatient you might be.

Meanwhile, I think you're mischaracterizing projects which aren't yet on 3.0; it's not that they're "behind the times", it's that you seem to have misunderstood how Python 3.0 was planned from the beginning. Nobody in the Python world expected this to be a sudden overnight transition. It was always expected to be and always described by the Python team, from the start, as a process of at least a year or two while existing projects dropped their support for older Pythons, cleaned up their code, got onto 2.6 or 2.7 to start running parallel on 2.x/3.x, and then finally made the 3.x-only jump at the end.

In other words, if your approach to Python is that you won't use a particular piece of software unless it plans to be on 3.0 immediately, you may find yourself without any software you can use, because this is not Django going off on its own and saying "screw it, we'll be lazy". And Django isn't going to be "the only thing holding you back", not by a long shot, since this is the type of plan most major projects seem to be going with (and the type of plan that a lot of projects been putting together for quite some time now, based on upstream recommendations to do it this way).

Re:jumping ship in python and kde4

[CarpetShark]

Hmm. Fair points. I guess I've always favored moving on ASAP in new versions, and simply supporting the older versions where necessary. Maybe that's coming from a standpoint of complete systems of closely-knit components, like OSes rather than many distributed cooperating projects.

Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts on this.

Wine, VMs, and 3d accel

[CarpetShark]

If this keeps up Linux becomes a solid games platform.

VirtualBox 2.x (2.1? not sure) recently got 3d acceleration support. Most of the other open source VMs (as well as the proprietary ones) are also going to accelerated 3d. Combined with the general move towards multiple cores and hardware support for virtualisation, this is pretty much guaranteed to bring decent windows (and OS X) app and gaming support to Linux. If physics acceleration takes off more, it'll be the next milestone, but there's still time for that, and the 3d acceleration technology combined with things like OpenCL should help to make physics accel support a smaller/faster project.

Re:Wine, VMs, and 3d accel

[rsmith-mac]

this is pretty much guaranteed to bring decent windows (and OS X) app and gaming support to Linux.

At this point, this isn't necessarily a true statement. Outstanding bugs aside, none of these solutions offer 3D performance that approaches a native. The performance hit is enough to force you turn down the quality settings in the best of cases, and astronomical in the worst. Although there can be a future going this way, we'd need to see a massive performance improvement to bring us to some level of parity. Running Windows games very slowly is an improvement over not being able to run them at all, but it's still not usable.

I don't expect the current methods of 3D acceleration on VMs is going to do the trick, it's going to take direct hardware access to get speed where it needs to be.

Re:Wine, VMs, and 3d accel

[Dolda2000]

There is the problem, however, that in a VM, you need to be running Windows. There are those of us who don't particularly want to go buy a version of Windows just to run some Windows game/application. I applaud the Wine guys' efforts instead. They are doing an immensely impressive work.

Re:Wine, VMs, and 3d accel

[CarpetShark]

True enough, however, ReactOS might be an option too. It would let you use more windows drivers, if nothing else.

no war

[CarpetShark]

So... it's just a chair-throwing competition?

Re:no war

[John Hasler]

There is only one guy throwing chairs. And he isn't hitting anything.

Vala and Genie Mono

[CarpetShark]

Have you looked at Vala at all? It seems to be the perfect answer to C#. Not only is it totally free and open source, with no MS dependency, it's FASTER, and LEANER, with no runtime dependencies except for gobject, which all other GNOME software depends on anyway. It's faster and leaner than C++ even, according to benchmarks. Vala truly seems to be the way forward for serious app development on GNOME. I can't wait 'til it hits 1.0.

Genie is a similar project, but using a python-like syntax. It's more recent, and isn't in debian/ubuntu yet (which means I haven't really bothered with it yet), but seems to provide similar advantages.

Mono 2 a victory?

[Anonymous Coward]

How "doing stuff the Microsoft way because you can't convince people to use better tools" is a victory exactly?

How to make KDE4.1 panel thinner

[slashbart]

Click on the 'foot' icon (or whatever it is, on the right end of the panel).

Move to the top of that configuration bar until your mouse get a drag type pointer.

Drag down or up. You won't see the effect immediately, but when you close the settings, your new panel will be smaller or larger.

This with 4.1 from Kubuntu, no developer previews or anything

no way kde4

[HermMunster]

After using kde4 for quite some time on several occasions over an extended period of time there is no way anyone, imho, could ever consider it a tech victory. microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank.

it doesn't even have a desktop.

i use linux for everything. these ppl need to rethink their approach to their decision on how to implement a desktop in kde4.

Re:no way kde4

[Brandybuck]

The developers of the new KDE desktop disdain the traditional desktop, and as near as I can tell, disdain the people who like the traditional. To them it's obsolete, archaic, your "grandpa's desktop", etc. If you criticize the new direction, you are asked to leave.

F*CK That Noise!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

SSL, ArK, and Samba though dolphin are working great in the 4.2 pre-release.

I don't give a rats ass!!! 4.1 is the version that has shipped with the major distros and it still sucks!! Perhaps not quite as bad as 4.0 but, still way too bad for regular use.

Offering up SVN or pre-release versions as fixes to inherent and intentional breakage is not an acceptable answer.

The KDE project took an excellent and well working system and completely destroyed it by throwing everything out and starting fresh. That may or may not be a good idea. But to release a severely broken system that remains severely broken in its second official release was a disastrous idea!

O/T

[Anonymous Coward]

I adore your sig. It's one of the main reason I think holocaust-deniers chould have freedom of expression. Why would we *stop* people undermining their own credibility?

Chrome is not open source

[Raenex]

Chrome isn't even open source, Chromium is.

Also, my understanding is that Chromium is Chrome with the logo / branding stripped out for trademark reasons, similar to Netscape / Mozilla in the early days. To say that they're separate at the moment is like arguing Linux vs Gnu/Linux. One's technically righter than the other, but they still both work.

Google portraying Chrome as open source is a Big Lie. If it was truly open source, I would be able to download the source and build the exact same binary. Instead, what they do is distribute a binary that you don't get all of the source to. That means it's based on open source, but the product itself is not open source. A proprietary binary based on 99% open source code is still a proprietary binary.

And it's not just trademarks. It also includes functionality that reports back to Google. From a blog post by a Google product manager (bits bolded by me):

"Chromium is the name we have given to the open source project and the browser source code that we released and maintain at www.chromium.org. One can compile this source code to get a fully working browser. Google takes this source code, and adds on the Google name and logo, an auto-updater system called GoogleUpdate, and RLZ (described later in this post), and calls this Google Chrome. [...] RLZ: When you do a Google search from the Google Chrome address bar, an "RLZ parameter" is included in the URL. It is also sent separately on days when Google Chrome has been used or when certain significant events occur such as a successful installation of Google Chrome. RLZ contains some encoded information, such as where you downloaded Google Chrome and where you got it from. This parameter does not uniquely identify you, nor is it used to target advertising. This information is used to understand the effectiveness of different distribution mechanisms, such as downloads directly from Google vs. other distribution channels. More information is available in the Google Chrome help center. This cannot be disabled so long as your search provider is Google. If your default search provider is not Google, then searches performed using the address bar will go to your default search provider, and will not include this RLZ parameter."

Yeah yeah, Google says they don't invade your privacy, but privacy policies aren't a replacement for open source. Wouldn't you like the source code to auto-update and phone home behavior? Wouldn't you have the source code if Chrome was actually open source? It isn't. Chromium is open source. Chrome isn't.

Re:Chrome is not open source

[Anonymous Coward]

So... Chrome is basically open source except for logos and the bits that interact with Google's server in private ways.

I mean, sure it would be nice to have those components under an open source license, and be able to complie your own chrome instead of your own chromium. But any marketshare and effort spent on chrome will help open-source projects by virtue of being 99% based on an open-source project.

Again, this all reeks of Debian thumbing their nose at Red Hat for including non-OS binaries in their distributions. It's basically open source, it's helping to crack the microsoft monoculture, and any impressions they may get in the media are good ones... can we please get back to fighting the important fight at sea, rather than throwing our friends off the ship for semantic squabbles?

Re:Chrome is not open source

[Raenex]

Chrome is a proprietary binary that can't be recreated from source. That's why it is not open source. We can thank Google for open sourcing the majority of Chrome as Chromium, but it is an absolute lie to call Chrome itself open source. If Microsoft had done this, everybody would be all over them. Google does it, and everybody is blind to it. "Oh, it's just trademarks."

I really don't care if people do or don't use Chrome, or even if Chrome is open source. What I do care about are true labels. Google should stop their lying.

re: i like KDE4

[Risen888]

Christ, man, I just want to launch an app, and occasionally glance down at the laucher to see how much battery life I have. I don't want a "framework" that can do everything.

You don't want a desktop environment. You want Fluxbox. It's out there.

Awesome bar, awful user

[Anonymous Coward]

1) The ghosted url-information in the dropdown is not distracting at all. What kind of theme are you using?

2) If your son would just select webbkomickz.com (whatever) once he starts typing "we", it would quickly adapt and bring it up first. Or "sl"(ashdot), "di"(gg), "li"(fehacker), etc.

3) You google around for netbooks, and find a page that you later realize you want to return to.
Hmm, it was on cnet, and it was about acer.

The old way, you would start typing "cnet." and not find the URL, because it was actually at "news.cnet.". How would you remember such a thing?

The new way, you type "cnet acer" and find it, probably first. Like google on your local history!

Try it (or do you feel that the url gives you all information you need?):
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10119456-1.html

4) By explaining 2) and 3) to some friends, they reversed and started liking it a lot. It simply is better.

You've just reiterated my point

[Rix]

KDE isn't a factor.

What you can do with KDE is a subset of what you can do with Gnome, so there's no reason to support KDE if you support Gnome.

Not when you're talking about platforms

[Rix]

If you write, say, an IRC client and release it under the GPL then I can't extend it in a proprietary way. It's a bit restrictive, but it can be overcome. I can write my own IRC client and do my own thing off somewhere else.

If you license a *platform* under the GPL I can't just go off and write my own. The value is as much in the people using it as the code itself.

KDE is, in effect, a walled garden.

Qt's licensing doesn't encourage anything

[Rix]

It just herds people toward Gnome. I'm sure the FSF likes that just fine.

I thought I will be reading a discussion..

[libcrypto]

I thought I will be reading a discussion on Open Source Victories. Guess its just KDE vs Gnome. Sigh!!